Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-02-18-Speech-1-185"
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"en.20080218.26.1-185"2
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"Mr President, during discussions on the Lisbon Strategy and all it meant for growth and competitiveness in Europe, unfortunately the issue of external trade did not receive the attention it deserved as a substantial part of a strategy for competitiveness, growth and employment within the European Union. We have now moved on and the European Commission has corrected this situation, it has set things straight and it has clearly positioned external trade, access to foreign markets, as yet another pillar of the structure that must lead to growth and welfare in the European Union.
The export of goods and services is a basic component of competitiveness in our economies, and is thus a factor of employment and wealth in the European Union. The main export access difficulties arise from non-tariff barriers in particular, rather than from generally recognised tariffs. The Commission has already carried out a wide-ranging consultation, thereby demonstrating its intentions within the context of its broader strategy for a global Europe, intentions that we support. This report, in fact, covers a good many of the replies received during the consultation, or some of them at any rate, which the Commission decided not to include at the time.
Globalisation is not an external threat from which we need to be protected. In my view, it is a huge opportunity to achieve what we could not achieve before, and a larger market is one way of creating wealth, in other words, creating employment and improve the citizens’ welfare. Clearly, and here I am speaking to a certain section of the House, that what this report is calling for is market access, market access that must be enhanced, a strategy that can and must respect the circumstances prevailing in each country. European leadership in this area respect the legitimate concerns of emerging economies, and must continue to do so.
One of the world’s most open economies, however, such as the European model, cannot allow itself to be carried away by certain dogmatisms. The export of goods and services cannot be subject to unjustifiable barriers, nor can public contracts, and the Commission can and must do more in both these areas. It can and must improve its instruments in Brussels, in the framework of the EU, through better coordination with the trade promotion bodies in Member States and regions, and with the actual businesses involved. It is here, Commissioner, that the word subsidiarity ought to be understood in its broadest sense. It is here that the Commission has a role to play that cannot be played by any other entity, a role that elbows no one out of the way and enhances every one of us, coordinating the work that others already do, perhaps less effectively than the Commission might.
Thus the report sets out a number of specific points, some very specific indeed, which the Commission can improve within the context of its market access strategy. I do not intend to read them out here, but they are extremely clear and precise, and may be assessed with the same kind of precision. We are also making an extremely specific request for the Commission to define
courses of action to defend and improve the presence of SME products in third country markets, since it is these products that encounter most difficulties when they have no protection.
The Commission also can, and must, secure better coordination of resources on the ground without offending sensibilities or excluding anyone. Each state, each export support body, each trade delegation from a Member State: without offending anyone, the EU trade delegations can strengthen their role in third countries. There can be no justification for the lack of communication between certain foreign trade actors, whom anyone who has made a visit will know. Nor can we discard, whenever possible, a genuine multilateral approach with a view to improving standardisation, and the need to improve mechanisms within the WTO framework; all this will prove extremely useful.
I therefore feel that we can all welcome the adoption of this report, presumably by a large majority. I particularly wish to thank the secretariat of the Committee on International Trade, which helped with the drafting of the report, and the shadow rapporteurs in the various parliamentary groups who tabled amendments and improved the text.
This signals the start of a new political impetus. It is not just a piece of paper to be approved, framed and hung on the wall. This is the beginning of a strategy, as the name suggests, and a strategy requires a whole range of measures: these measures must be implemented and we must be able to ask the Commission at a later date to come back to Parliament and explain to us how they have been implemented."@en1
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