Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-25-Speech-2-247"
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"en.20070925.31.2-247"2
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".
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, even though negotiations with Mercosur are only making slow progress, the EU should send the clear signal to the government of Brazil and our other partners that it will not be concluding any bilateral agreements with individual governments that oppose the processes of integration in the respective regions: not with Brazil, which is a member of Mercosur and potentially a future member of Unasur, not with Columbia or Peru, which are members of the Andean Community and also potential members of Unasur.
The difficulties in the negotiations with Mercosur are not trifling matters. The future of farming, not just the future of agribusiness and the service sector, industrialisation, technology transfer, access to medication, these are all questions to which we must find answers together with our Latin American partners if we want real cooperation with this region. Our aim should be a process of cooperation in which the interests of the citizens are central. Cooperation should not be limited simply to dividing up market shares and access to energy and water or to distributing patents on intellectual property.
My Group has warmly welcomed the fact that Brazil, like Thailand, has been taking significant steps, despite objections from the pharmaceutical industry, to improve access to medication. These steps should be supported by the Commission and Council. We also welcome the fact that Brazil has already declared itself willing to discuss the problem of the destruction of the rainforest in the Amazon, because this is essential for stabilising the climate.
Even though destruction has slowed down in the last two years, it has not stopped. Pressure from both the European Union and the USA and other players for access to biofuels, particularly ethanol, instead of better controls on their consumers’ behaviour, is another danger for the rainforest and food security.
Every so often we hear from the Brazilian authorities that the country has to expand its agricultural industry in order to improve its financial situation in the face of its problem with foreign debt. As you know, new governments in the region are trying to follow new paths to resolve this problem. Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Paraguay and Argentina have joined forces to create a Bank of the South and thereby to become independent of the World Bank and the IMF. This is also good news, even if we as the European Union are shareholders in other banks and therefore suffer the loss of credit allocations. However, we then must abandon our kind of conditionality.
The European Union should not look on passively here, but be pro-active and develop and extend these approaches that are completely in line with our own aims of cooperation and environmental protection."@en1
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