Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-09-12-Speech-1-051-000"
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"en.20110912.20.1-051-000"2
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"Madam President, there is a rather famous book called ‘Alice in Wonderland’. This book has a slightly less well-known sequel, ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’. In that book there is a passage where the Red Queen tells Alice ‘the rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today’. Alice objects that it must happen sometimes that there is ‘jam today’. To which the Red Queen says – and here I paraphrase – no, there is never jam today.
Well, that is rather like the EU Trade Commissioner and the successive Doha rounds. We never do get the jam today. There is at least one reason for this. Parliament’s own Library briefing states that the focus of the Doha Round was to be on development.
For most developing countries, the critical aspect of the Doha Round is agriculture. Around three quarters of the population of most developing countries reside in rural areas and, in consequence, a majority depend on the agricultural sector.
The European Union’s common agricultural policy, or CAP, is equivalent to about USD 80 billion a year, and this huge subsidy is a distorting factor in world food markets. It erodes the fair operation of the market in food, generates export dumping and damages the ability of farmers in the developing world to earn a living. I think that some colleagues who do not agree with me about everything will agree with this.
I must further point out that a disproportionate amount of the CAP goes on subsidising the growing of sugar beet. This crop, grown in the developed world, can never be fully competitive – without subsidy – with sugar cane. It is the continuance of the CAP in its present form which sabotages a proper result from the Doha Round.
What, then, are the prospects for meaningful reform? The answer is that there are too many politicians here in the European Parliament who oppose the reform of the CAP. It is just not going to happen. No meaningful reform of the CAP means no meaningful outcome to the Doha Round."@en1
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