Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-23-Speech-1-170"
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"en.20090323.20.1-170"2
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"Mr President, I spend a lot of my time in this Parliament telling people that I am not Mr Karim and that I am, in fact, Mr Kamall. It must be confusing for people to hear Mr Kamall speaking on a Karim report. I am speaking on his behalf as, owing to unforeseen circumstances, he cannot be here tonight, for which he apologises.
His report effectively covers trade in goods, services, investment and intellectual property, and development issues. A joint alternative resolution by the PPE-DE, ALDE and UEN Groups has now been tabled, because it was felt that the original committee decision was the upshot of a rather unrepresentative vote, which left the report with several protectionist clauses intact. The alternative resolution better highlights how important a trading partner India is for the EU and the benefits that the liberalisation of trade can bring to both countries.
The EU and India launched negotiations in June 2007 on what is termed a free trade agreement, but what many would probably more correctly call a preferential trade agreement. The report calls for the conclusion of a comprehensive, ambitious and balanced free trade agreement between the EU and India, which should improve market access to goods and services, covering substantially many areas of trade, and including provisions on regulatory transparency in areas relevant to mutual trade investment, as well as things like sanitary and phytosanitary standards, intellectual property protection, trade facilitation and customs.
The main points of the report indicate that, if you look at trade in goods, India’s average applied tariffs have decreased to levels that are now comparable with other countries in Asia – notably India’s average applied tariff, which is now 14.5% compared to an EU average of 4.1%. It also notes India’s concerns about the implications of REACH, costly certificates for exporting fruit to the EU and costly conformity procedures for the EC mark, and stresses that those issues must be resolved in the preferential trade agreement.
The report also points out that services liberalisation must in no way hinder the right to regulate services, including public services. However, it should also be recognised that quite often the state is unable to provide so-called ‘public’ services, and we should recognise that there is a role for non-state actors – the private sector – in providing essential services to the poor, especially when the state itself cannot do this on its own, quite often owing to a shortfall in income.
Trade in services between the EU and India is relatively unbalanced, with the EU exporting 1.5% of its services to India, while India exports 9.2% of its services to the EU. The report also encourages India to develop appropriate data protection legislation to ensure that, in our trade in services, we can have confidence in the ability of Indian companies to handle large amounts of data, since there are concerns about data protection.
The report also recognises that the investment chapters have often come accompanied by a commitment to liberalising capital movements and renouncing capital controls. So we ask the Commission to refrain from including such clauses, given the importance of capital controls, especially for poorer countries, to mitigate the impact of the financial crisis.
The report goes on to welcome India’s commitment to strong intellectual property protection and to the use of TRIPS flexibilities to meet certain public health obligations. Once again, we should all be aware that too many obligations on public health can often leave citizens in poorer countries unable to access medicines, because there is no incentive for pharmaceutical companies to develop medicines for those countries.
Finally, the report recognises that a substantial development chapter is an essential part of any trade agreement, and that we should ensure trade and foreign direct investment. It also recognises that there is concern, particularly in this House, over issues such as environmental standards and core labour, occupational health and safety legislation. We should also recognise that, in seeking some sort of balance between trade issues and environmental protection, ILO standards etc, the pendulum can often swing too far one way and we end up with these taking precedence over trade and condemning poor countries to even more poverty because we make it difficult for entrepreneurs in those countries to develop capacities."@en1
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