Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-09-12-Speech-3-418-000"
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"en.20120912.23.3-418-000"2
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"Mr President, the EU has historically given one-sided preferences to our ACP partners. That was challenged in the WTO and we had a WTO waiver until 2007 which allowed us to continue to give those one-sided preferences. That should have expired if all EPAs (Economic Partnership Agreements) had been signed, but they had not so we had then to pass the Market Access Regulation 1528/2007 to provide a bridging solution and this has since allowed duty-free and quota-free access for the 36 ACP countries that have initialled EPAs but not yet signed or ratified them.
The European Commission now believes that this temporary solution should come to an end and their proposal is to remove this preferential access on 1 January 2014. In my view, Mr President, the Commission is half correct. It is true that the regulation was a temporary solution and it is therefore reasonable that an end date should be set. It is also fair to the other developing countries outside the ACP who see countries at a similar economic level to them getting benefits that they are denied.
However, I believe that we have to see this proposal in the context of the current climate of economic partnership agreement negotiations. We must not create the perception, fair or otherwise, that we are bullying African countries into signing and ratifying EPAs without giving them enough time for careful consideration. That is why the Trade Committee has put forward the deadline of 1 January 2016 which gives due notice to the ACP countries that their preferences must come to an end but also, in my view, gives a realistic timescale to complete negotiations.
Now some colleagues have said to me in the course of the debate that this is yet another extension of the deadline. Colleagues, it is not, because we have never had a deadline until now, so this is the first proposal for a deadline and if passed it is important to understand that it will be set in stone, because no change to this deadline could take place without a further Commission proposal and without the agreement of both Parliament and Council; and I suggest that it is unlikely that the Commission would bring forward another proposal.
The Commission believes that the 2014 deadline would give momentum to the EPA negotiations. I have to say, having spoken to colleagues in many of the countries that are affected, I believe the opposite to be the truth. Most of them regard 2014 as an unreasonable target. If we were to vote for 2014 we are, in my opinion, excluding 17 countries from the scheme. They would simply not be able to meet that 2014 deadline, whereas 2016 sets a firm but achievable target.
So for organisational reasons, for political reasons and for reasons of economics, I think 2016 is a workable and achievable deadline, and I hope even at this stage we can persuade the Commission that this is a good target to set. They get their objective of a firm end date to the preferences but we also give our partners a reasonable negotiating timetable."@en1
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