Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-05-09-Speech-1-106-000"
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"en.20110509.19.1-106-000"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it is now almost a year since the people of Pakistan suffered devastating floods. We all have very close ties with the people of this stricken country.
What is scandalous, however, is the fact that the negotiations in the WTO are still dragging on, and that alone makes it clear that this form of trade facilitation is not suitable to be used as an emergency aid measure. My group has repeatedly called on the Commission to put forward a plan B in order to be able to help the people of Pakistan quickly and permanently to rebuild their country. No alternative solution has been presented, however. Perhaps the Commission simply lacks ideas or is unable to act because it feels obstructed by resistance in the European Council, which it is only too familiar with. Otherwise, it would seem as if the difficult negotiations in the WTO are being used as an excuse for the lack of action.
You knew as well as we did that these negotiations would be difficult before they even started and you probably also already knew this when some of the foreign ministers from Germany and other Member States sent you on this mission. After all, the facilitation of trade in the area of textiles, leather and ethanol that you now want to offer to Pakistan would undermine the GSP+ (Generalised System of Preferences+) status that countries like Bangladesh have attained, and indeed, in contrast to Pakistan, they have attained it through ratification of important UN and ILO conventions for the rights of workers and environmental protection. It is precisely this status advantage that enables Bangladesh to import primary products from Pakistan, to process them and then export them to Europe. It is no wonder that this country is now putting up resistance.
However, we cannot in all honesty expect approval for our desire to help Pakistan at the expense of one of the poorest countries in the world. By doing so, we will ultimately damage ourselves, too, and indeed we will be doing this on the eve of the presentation of the new Commission draft on the revision of our system of trade preferences.
My solution to this problem is therefore as follows: place the focus on direct aid for the reconstruction following the floods and take immediate action instead of losing in the negotiations in Geneva. After all, with every day that we fail to provide aid, we as Europeans are losing the trust of Pakistan in particular and we will ultimately pay a high political price for this."@en1
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