Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-02-10-Speech-3-635"
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"en.20100210.33.3-635"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Europe is currently experiencing an unprecedented crisis which, beyond the economic and financial crisis, represents first and foremost a crisis of the system.
Indeed, when we are faced with unfair practices, it is clear that protection is necessary, but the principle of it must be accepted and defended internationally and the sometimes false accusations of protectionism dismissed once and for all.
Moreover, the need for support for trade policies is becoming more obvious every day, and such support depends, in particular, on the policies implemented by the Union being genuinely consistent. Consistency in policies is not an intellectual debate, but an absolute necessity if we want to redefine a new development model.
Even before beginning to deal with the effects of the economic crisis on world trade, which forms the topic of our debate, I wish to clarify one point: trade is not a victim of the crisis; it is also one of its contributing factors.
Indeed, we are currently experiencing a period of huge global imbalances, fuelled, on the one hand, by certain countries’ excessive trade deficits at the cost of growing domestic indebtedness and, on the other, by trade surpluses stimulated by the exports of certain, especially emerging, countries with internal consumption that is not growing at the same rate.
Moreover, the trade liberalisation policy conducted thus far has only exacerbated these imbalances, weakening, in particular, the poorest countries on the planet. These countries, which have been encouraged to specialise in export monocultures, have therefore found themselves destitute in the face of extreme fluctuations in the prices of raw materials, the volatility of which has increased as a result of international speculation.
It is a strange world that sets as its first Millennium Development Goal the eradication of poverty and hunger but then, at the same time, speculates on the rise in wheat prices.
However, the very people who defended liberalisation and deregulation at any cost in the 1990s are now finding themselves in a difficult situation as well. The continual rise in job losses, stagnant, sometimes even negative, growth, and the developing social crisis are all factors that mean we can no longer afford to let jobs disappear in the name of this cult. In a period of crisis, how do we explain to employees who are losing their jobs that the main thing is to maintain deregulated trade, even at the cost of sudden and sometimes tragic relocations?
The crisis we are going through is therefore definitely a systemic crisis, to which we must respond with a new development model. In its current Global Europe strategy, the vision developed by the Commission is essentially based on access to the market and the liberalisation of all sectors.
Commissioner, I believe we need to redefine this strategy, which has been on the wrong track and sometimes led to setbacks. It is not by forcing developing countries to open up even more that we will revive our industries’ exports. That would only aggravate the situation in those countries, which already accommodate 70% of the 59 million people in the world who lost their jobs in 2009.
On the contrary, it is essential to consider a new strategy that strikes the right balance between openness, protection and support. I would like to return to these ideas. We cannot ignore these developments, which lead the United States to make further use of its trade defence tool or China to take issue with the WTO over European anti-dumping measures."@en1
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