Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-01-17-Speech-1-113-000"
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"en.20110117.16.1-113-000"2
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"Madam President, we are debating Voluntary Partnership Agreements. These are lovely words, they are good words: they represent a European Union that is not trying to impose its will upon developing nations but is trying to lend a helping hand to achieve common goals. Yet the practicalities of an agreement with a state the size of Congo create all sorts of daunting problems.
The size of the state alone is something akin to that of Europe; the governance for much of that state is non-existent; corruption levels are quite extraordinary – Transparency International puts the Republic of Congo almost bottom of its league table.
Then there is the number of staff we have working to ensure that this agreement delivers on its goals – just a handful of people; the profits of illegal logging are absolutely vast and perhaps greater than anything we can offer by way of compensation; and the markets for illegal wood are in countries like China, which may not be paying anything like the attention that we pay, and the respect that should be paid, to maintaining forests.
All these problems suggest that voluntary partnerships, however good our intentions, will have difficulty delivering the goals. So what assurances can the Commission give us that every possible step will be taken to ensure that our high ambitions here will truly be realised, and that we can all have confidence that these voluntary partnership agreements, as we make them in future, will deliver on the goals we have set?"@en1
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