Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-02-18-Speech-1-205"
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"en.20080218.27.1-205"2
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"Mr President, it is my good fortune to be able to respond happily to two subjects in Parliament this evening. I am very pleased that I made it all the way back from Kiev in order to do so.
Although our attempts have often been portrayed by people as an attempt to go to one side or the other, these impressions can only have been formed by people who cannot have seen our preliminary conclusions and proposals, because there is nothing in such a package that weakens our ability to tackle unfair trade, and nothing which fundamentally alters the basis of the operation of our trade defence instruments.
However, it is clear from consultation that this issue is politically sensitive and continues to attract vigorous debate and, I have to say, some disagreement.
A package that balances the different concerns in the debate will not currently, in my view, attract the necessary support, and it is better to build on consensus than seek to reconcile presently irreconcilable viewpoints on what clarification and what reform should take place.
The political environment in which this subject has been discussed is not easy. Some argue that, at a time when we are pressing partners like China to trade fairly, we must not risk even the perception that the EU will lower its guard on trade defence. No such motivation, no such intention is present, but, nonetheless, some have argued that even risking the perception would be unwise at this moment.
Furthermore, the rules negotiations in the Doha Round, in particular the chairs’ text, have also put the international TDI environment into considerable flux, because of the text’s surprising and, frankly, unacceptable content. I do not think there has been a chairs’ text in the history of chairs’ texts in the Doha Round that has attracted less support from right across the membership of the WTO than the current chairs’ text on rules.
But, above all, our objective has been to strengthen unity on the operation of trade defence instruments in order to make them more workable, and it is not my job as Commissioner to weaken that unity.
The reality is that, as of today, this unity that I would like to see is not sufficiently in evidence amongst our Member States. That does not mean one side of this debate is right and that the other is wrong, just that both sides need to continue working towards a greater consensus and, frankly, a greater sense of solidarity in the operation of these instruments.
That is what I propose to encourage. We will continue to consult on the ideas that we have floated and to build agreement by drawing on our experience.
I would finish by making this observation. The pressures that global economic change is exerting on our trade defence system are here to stay. They are not going to go away; they are actually going to grow. The pressures are going to become greater. Our ability to operate the traditional consensus and solidarity is going to become harder, not easier, which makes it all the more important that the role of the Commission grows in navigating our way through the different and competing interests and views that businesses and Member States have on this subject.
I believe that future cases will demonstrate the need for clarity and will demonstrate the need for the sort of guidelines that we have originally drafted. The questions with which we started this review will still be present in six months, in a year and in two years, and I firmly believe that, in due course, they are going to have to be addressed.
So let me start by thanking Parliament for the invitation and the opportunity to make this statement on trade defence. I would like to thank Parliament for its close interest in this dossier, evidenced by our discussions both in plenary and in the Committee on International Trade.
Our challenge is together to find economically and politically credible answers, and the Commission will continue to work with that in mind.
In 2006, the Commission and the Council agreed on the need for a review of Europe’s trade defence instruments. The intention of this review was to ensure that Europe’s vital tools were defending its workers and businesses against unfair trade and were continuing to work as effectively as possible, especially taking into account the dramatic changes in the global economy, where European businesses operate global supply chains, and where the mix of economic interests amongst European businesses is inevitably becoming more and more complex and difficult to judge and to call.
Following our review and public consultation, and with the backing of the College, I worked with my officials on a set of proposals for adjustments to the EU’s trade defence rules that would offer real improvements in accessibility, transparency and speed and clarity for businesses. They would include, for example, greater access to documents, greater assistance for small businesses using the trade defence system and faster provisional measures.
We would also propose to clarify, through the drafting of guidelines, the application of EU rules in two important areas. First, the considerations for determining what degree of production outside of Europe disqualifies a company from being treated as European for the purposes of our investigations and trade defence assessments.
Second, regarding the considerations that should be used in the Community interest test, which allows us to determine that trade defence action is indeed in the wider economic interest of the European Union – something which, as I say, is becoming increasingly complex and difficult to analyse, where situations are not quite as straightforward and not quite as black and white as they perhaps might appear on the surface, or indeed as was the case in the classic operation of trade defence machinery in the past.
The intention in both these areas is largely to codify established practice, which would create clarity and predictability for businesses and decision-making in contentious cases, which we have had experience of in recent years and which, I suggest, are going to increase, not decrease, in number in the coming years.
Whatever your position on the merits or demerits of anti-dumping, those, I think, are useful things to improve upon and to clarify and to issue guidelines upon, in order to give greater certainty and predictability to those who are appealing for the use of these instruments.
A set of proposals along these lines would be balanced. It would reflect a middle ground of the debate among all the interested parties and the Member States. There is no point and no advantage in trying to push the centre of gravity, in the design and operation of our trade defence instruments, to one side or the other in the range of opinions in the European Union that inhabit the subject of trade defence. It is necessary to devise and to identify a route that takes you, broadly speaking, down the middle."@en1
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