Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-03-13-Speech-2-588-000"
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"en.20120313.23.2-588-000"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, in contrast to the blessed sweetness of its finished product, the cocoa market has been practically cursed from the very start.
When Francesco Carletti, a Florentine trader who was the first to circumnavigate the Earth using merchant ships between the late 1500s and early 1600s, brought cocoa to Europe, he denounced a business in which the main financing for investments in this plant was derived from the slave trade. Ever since then, the inhumane nature of the cocoa trade has persisted.
If the product comes from Ghana or Côte d’Ivoire – which account for almost 60% of global output – then the use of children is a given, the majority of whom are less than 14 years old and often subject to genuine trafficking, which sees them taken away from their families in nearby countries and shut away in the plantations.
Last week, I was in Côte d’Ivoire for an annual meeting of Euro-African liberal democrat members of parliament. There, I met the President of the main non-governmental organisation (NGO) that fights against the exploitation of children in cocoa plantations. The organisation is not without support, since even the wife of President Ouattara has come to its aid, opening the national surveillance committee against child exploitation and labour.
That said, we need to move away from depending on volunteers, good examples and harsh words, and instead imbue the markets with a sense of social responsibility that has so far been lacking in the cocoa plantations, with their distinctive non-intensive, non-mechanical culture, and the aggravating factor of the use of pesticides that are harmful to workers.
The agreement that has been signed – for which I should like to thank Mr Moreira and the Commission – is a step in the right direction, making the chocolate supply chain more transparent, involving NGOs and promoting fairer prices around the world. Since the EU controls most of the votes of importer countries in international cocoa organisations, it has a special responsibility to put the agreement quickly into action and use it as a way to make the production of this popular treat more humane.
As significant as it is, however, this agreement alone will not suffice. We also need consumers to be more aware so that they can make ethical purchases, while also promoting the production and sale of fair trade chocolate, which guarantees prices for producers and that no children were exploited in the plantations of Africa during the process. The EU can do much more in this area, including by setting out regulations on (European) certification that has so far been a private initiative."@en1
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