Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-22-Speech-2-045"
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"en.20070522.6.2-045"2
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"Mr President, I should like to express my appreciation for all the work that Mr Caspary has put into this report. As Commissioner Mandelson rightly said, our priority this year is to conclude the multilateral Doha development round. Alongside this, there are complementary negotiations for bilateral free trade agreements with South Korea, ASEAN and India.
Mr Caspary’s report lays down a template within which we must try to operate in these negotiations, not because of Mr Caspary but because of our committee. The report however contains its contradictions, I think, as Mr Helmer said, it is positively schizophrenic.
Some members of my group complain that the report is not development-friendly. I am not sure it was intended to be as our imminent negotiations are with countries like Singapore and South Korea, Thailand and India, countries not really in anyone’s less-developed countries category any more. Within ASEAN, Laos and Cambodia are covered by the EU’s ‘anything but arms’ policy and therefore have a degree of protection.
I welcome paragraph 30 of the report, which takes into account the interests of the smallest and weakest countries. I certainly welcome paragraph 32 that demands that ILO standards on decent work be included in future FTAs.
I have some sympathy with Mr Kamall’s points with regard to audiovisual services, though I have to say that the privatisation of health, education, drinking water and energy rarely helps the poor in developing countries; rather it helps the minority rich population.
I welcome paragraph 33, which makes it easier to suspend free trade agreements when they are not fulfilled, particularly with respect to social clauses. Yet for some in the PSE Group, it is paragraph 29 which is the killer paragraph. It demands far-reaching liberalisation of services. My group met yesterday and narrowly decided that it could not support the report if this and similar paragraphs were included."@en1
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