Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-22-Speech-2-070"
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"en.20070522.8.2-070"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, as a preliminary point, I should like to excuse my fellow Member, Mrs Sudre, who has been held up by a meeting with our new Prime Minister of France, Mr Fillon. She would have liked to have spoken on the subject of the particular circumstances of the Union’s outermost regions, which are particularly dear to her heart. I should also like to congratulate my friend, Mr Sturdy, on the scope and quality of his work in this excellent own-initiative report.
Our Union must conclude economic partnership agreements, or EPAs, with the countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, or the ACP countries. These agreements are designed to strengthen economic growth, regional integration and the fight against poverty in six of the world’s major disadvantaged areas. In line with the spirit of Cotonou, we need constantly to point out that the EPAs must not amount to mere free trade agreements, under the World Trade Organisation, but must represent a genuine partnership, making it possible to develop a new intervention framework that is conducive to the development of the ACP countries’ economies and, therefore, to consolidate peace, not least on the African continent, with a regional integration dynamic.
Due to their geographical location, near many ACP countries, the overseas communities, whether they belong to the EU or not, must be at the heart of these preferential and reciprocal agreements. It is imperative that the particular circumstances of the outermost regions and overseas countries and territories be taken into account as part of these negotiations, on the basis of Article 299(2) and (3) of the Treaty. The outermost regions and overseas countries and territories must be involved as far upstream as possible in the negotiations so that market access differentiations can be considered and their respective support arrangements coordinated, for the purposes of integrating them more into their regional environments.
It is in this connection, ladies and gentlemen, that I encourage you to support the amendments co-signed by Mrs Sudre and Mr Sturdy, on behalf of the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, and designed to strike an intelligent balance between the regional integration of these outermost territories and the historical and geopolitical links uniting them with Europe."@en1
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