Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-02-18-Speech-1-200"
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"en.20080218.26.1-200"2
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"Mr President, there is not much more to say. First of all, let me thank again all those who have enriched this debate, not just today but ever since the debate started, through their contributions, amendments and even the informal conversations we have had, which has resulted in a final text which is not the work of one rapporteur but of everyone involved.
We mostly shared the diagnosis, and I was very surprised at the tone of some of the comments from the Green corner of this House. It would be interesting to have the colleague in question go and see the results and consequences of free trade
and also to go and explain to a medium-sized enterprise, say near Barcelona where I live, that this was a ‘colonial approach’. I could quote so many companies who are fighting to export, with a great part of their activities depending on exports. He might like to tell the employees of those factories that they are just acting as European colonisers in trying to enlarge the export market share of the product they are manufacturing, when if China introduces barriers which prevent them from exporting what they are manufacturing it is their jobs which are at stake.
This is not just about big words on big European companies being colonial, it is about something much more real. Although everyone has the right to portray things as they wish, I must say that the idea of this being a ‘colonialist’ report really surprised me and might be even be viewed as comic by a lot of exporters in my country.
It is clear, though, that we do, in general, agree on the diagnosis, and as the Commission has said it is something that was started by the Council, was followed up by the Commission and is today being supported by Parliament, which of course puts a lot of responsibility on your shoulders, Commissioner, because we do have a common approach. Again, let me underline that this is a dynamic process and a fresh strategy, and some elements are indeed new and need to be followed up. May I quote a point in the report which was underlined by our colleague and which you liked so much: ‘We call on the Commission to reprioritise the deployment and eventually to increase the human resources available for European Union delegations, so that more staff are available to start up and ensure the successful functioning of market access teams’. The same is true
of what the report says on SMEs. There are a lot of new things in this report, and we wish you all the best in implementing them."@en1
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