Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-04-20-Speech-2-279"
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"en.20100420.11.2-279"2
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"Mr President, this has been an extremely useful and valuable debate for the preparations for the summit. Honourable Members have covered a wide range of different topics and I shall not least be making sure that the two presidents – the President of the Commission and the President of the Council – who, of course, will be leading the European Union at the summit, are fully aware of the issues that have been raised.
A number of honourable Members talked about the Arctic, and we have had discussions about that in recent times in Parliament. I accept that this is a very important issue, not least because it links to the other important issue I wanted to raise before I mention visas, which is climate change.
As far as we are concerned, Canada did belong to the group of countries that, in the Copenhagen negotiations, did not, in our view, take us anywhere near far enough. We can debate Copenhagen further – and no doubt in other conversations with the Commissioner responsible, there will be opportunities to do so. We were interested that, in the Speech from the Throne on 3 March, the Canadian Government stated that it fully supports the Copenhagen climate change accord. That is significant, and what we want to do in the context of the summit is to encourage and urge Canada to be ambitious, notably in increasing its mitigation target for 2020.
The international carbon market is key in shifting investment towards a low-carbon economy, and part of what we are able to do in our bilateral relationship is to push forward on those strategic questions of investment, of green technology and of collaboration, in trying to support all the measures we need to take to mitigate the problems of climate change.
The final issue – and there were many, but I just want to pick on three – and one which I, of course, wanted to raise, is the whole question of visas. This is extremely important and, as Member States represented here through their MEPs have mentioned, there are three Member States who are actually affected.
There is a lot of work going on to try and resolve this matter. We have had a lot of dialogue with Canada, a lot of the issues are well known and there are issues for Canada to resolve in terms of the legislation that it needs to put in place for the future. Honourable Members were quite right to raise this question and it will be part of the discussions.
The second expert working group meeting took place in Prague to look at the issues particularly relevant to the Czech Republic, and that has been facilitated by the Commission, so the Commission is fully involved.
I did pick up on, and will take away from this debate, the frustration of honourable Members who have raised the need to work quicker and further to address this problem and to recognise what is absolutely the most significant point of this, which is that this is not a bilateral issue, but a European Union-Canada issue, and we need to address it as such.
I am very grateful for the helpful way in which Members of Parliament have given me information, and put questions on areas I have to confess I do not know very much about – for example, on air transport, which I will have to find out about for them.
I would like just to pick up on two or three of the key areas that were discussed. In the context, there seemed to be a general view among honourable Members that this is an important relationship. Perhaps some of the frustrations I felt in the Chamber were because we recognise the importance of Canada and the importance of the shared values that we hold. The frustration of those honourable Members from the countries particularly affected by the visa question is therefore completely understandable.
Let me begin with trade, because quite a lot of the different contributions focused on that. We are right to go for an ambitious trade agreement. This will not be easy and from the very beginning – and I actually launched the trade negotiations – we recognised that, because of the particular interests of the EU and Canada, this was never going to be an easy negotiation. However, we should be very ambitious on both sides.
One example is intellectual property rights, where I am very concerned that Canada needs to make sure it has a proper regime in place. I know that it is looking at that and that the discussions and the rounds so far have been extremely positive and constructive and things are moving at a good pace.
I agree that we need to keep the Committee on International Trade fully informed and, as Mr Bradbourn said, those with a particular interest in Canada also need to be clearly in the loop on that. There will be an impact assessment, which is already being worked on at the present time, and, of course, Parliament will play its role in giving assent or not to the agreement when it is finally put forward. There is a very clear and key role for Parliament there.
All I would add to that are two things. One is that a good trade agreement actually benefits our citizens. That is what it is for. It is to make sure that for consumers, there are greater choices and for workers, there are greater opportunities. We need to ensure that all our trade agreements provide genuine opportunities across the European Union.
On the point on small and medium-sized enterprises, which I agree is very significant, I am reminded that one of the statistics that always struck me as being very interesting is that only 8% of our small and medium-sized enterprises actually trade, and only 3% trade outside of the European Union.
I have always felt, and continue to do so, that if we were able to increase those figures and provide opportunities – and government procurement may indeed be one of the areas where that is a possibility – then that is an opportunity in both directions for our small and medium-sized enterprises to benefit."@en1
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