Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-11-11-Speech-3-302"
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"en.20091111.23.3-302"2
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"Mr President, protectionists rarely admit that their proposals are protectionist, but rather hide their intentions behind other arguments. I would say that mandatory origin marking is a clear example of this. In June 2006, I stood here in this Chamber and quashed a number of myths concerning this very same proposal, and on that occasion the proposal ended up where it belongs – in the bin.
However, the horse-trading prior to the decision on the free trade agreement with Korea has resulted in us debating this proposal once again, and this is an inappropriate way to deal with this type of proposal. Three years later, a few myths are clearly still alive and well, and they need to be quashed.
Let us start, therefore, with the first one that is claimed time and again, namely that consumers are asking for this, and here the advocates claim to be supported by the Commission’s Internet consultation in this regard. However, they neglect to mention that 96.7% of the responses to the consultation came from a single country, namely Italy, where industry and organised special interest groups are the driving force on this issue. Today, it is possible for anyone who so wishes to origin-mark his or her goods, and, believe me, any competitive company that can envisage gaining customers in this way will already be doing this, so it is not needed.
The second myth is that the marking provides consumers with relevant information and consumer protection and is beneficial to the environment, as if it were a question of geography. No, this is merely playing on people’s prejudices, not protecting people. The third myth is that the marking increases European competitiveness. However, new technical barriers to trade do not protect European industry. It has nothing to do with competitiveness – that is only strengthened by open markets and a good business environment.
If we prohibit Member States from permitting this type of legislation within the EU because it is protectionist, why are we then to apply the same rules towards the rest of the world without acknowledging that it is protectionism? We dismissed the idea of introducing a mandatory ‘made in the EU’ marking, and so it would be unreasonable now to introduce this in relation to the rest of the world."@en1
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