Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-23-Speech-1-083"
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"en.20090323.14.1-083"2
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"Mr President, President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I had some notes prepared but I will put them aside and speak to you without notes, if you will excuse me, as many things have been said already and I do not want to repeat the words of my fellow Members.
We are on the eve of an important vote, an extremely important, almost historic vote because we are going to vote this week on the first Economic Partnership Agreements in this Parliament. We have been talking about it for a number of years and these discussions have been the subject of many often very heated debates where agreement has not always been the order of the day, nor has consensus.
We can, of course, feel pleased today about the way the situation has developed. The accounts you have given, as well as those given by the Presidency, show that there has been very positive development on this issue, especially since your arrival, Commissioner, it has to be said.
Unfortunately, and this is why I have some misgivings, for some of us there are issues, questions and fears that still remain in relation to these Economic Partnership Agreements.
First of all, we have to recognise that there is only one full Economic Partnership Agreement today. The others are not there yet, we are at the stage of interim agreements while the fundamental approach has been regional integration. There is only one that meets this criterion, and even then, one of the principal countries in this region of the Caribbean, Haiti, has not signed the agreement, which surely says a great deal.
Secondly, on the trade front, as you have pointed out, we have historic ties. For a long time there has been trade between North and South, but look at how it takes place. We plunder everything there is and take all the riches. Of course, we sell the coltan that our companies have extracted from Kivu to sell in the North, but look at the disastrous consequences for the people of the South, and the unequal sharing, to say the least, that we see there.
Aside from that, you add a development policy that we have been employing for 40 years saying that we Europeans are the world’s biggest sponsor, but it is a policy that is failing now and has to be reviewed. Most of the poorest countries in the world are doing badly, just as badly as 40 years ago, if not worse. That, therefore, is the reason for our misgivings and our questioning. What guarantees do we have with regard to this? I am not going to repeat what Mr Arif has said but I join him in saying that we would like to have a statement from you, on behalf of the Commission, on a list of points that he has clearly set out, and I should like to finish by speaking about national parliaments.
We have been asked, as Members of the European Parliament, to make a decision about the Economic Partnership Agreements, the consequences of which, if they are badly negotiated, will be tragic for the people of the South, but not for us. No European citizen will be worse off if the Economic Partnership Agreements are a failure. On the other hand, there could be citizens in the South who are going to be even worse off. I shall finish by saying to you quite simply, Commissioner, that we would like the national parliaments of the partner countries to have their say, since they represent the people of the South in this matter, and not only us."@en1
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