Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-04-20-Speech-2-274"
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"en.20100420.11.2-274"2
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"Mr President, I hope the High Representative will congratulate the Canadians on their diplomatic skills because they have something to teach us. At the recent conference on the trade in endangered species (CITES), they teamed up with their Japanese allies to comprehensively defeat our attempt to introduce a trade ban on bluefin tuna.
That CITES conference was all too reminiscent of the one on climate change in Copenhagen, where the EU position was unclear. We seemed to have spent a lot of time debating amongst ourselves, rather than debating with others, on a day-by-day basis and we ended up being soundly thrashed.
Japan and its Canadian allies had spent months beforehand doing the rounds, winning friends and buying a bit of influence here and there in order to get the votes they needed to get the result they wanted. We ended up coming out looking incoherent, disorganised and weak.
The Environment Commissioner has said that this must never happen again. He is determined to make a change. However, we have conferences of this kind taking place across the world all the time and we need to ensure that we are harnessing the full diplomatic skills of the European Union to ensure we have a forward-looking strategy, that we use our resources effectively, and that we stop punching below our weight."@en1
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