Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2017-05-15-Speech-1-162-000"
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"en.20170515.18.1-162-000"2
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"Madam President, I think we can all agree here that illicit trade and corruption in trade are problems that must be tackled. The rapporteur is spot on when she says that overly complex customs rules can harm SMEs. So a balance is always necessary. But also, every chain is only as strong as its weakest link – and again the rapporteur is absolutely right to recognise issues with so—called forum shopping, where goods are shipped through the area where it is perceived that customs controls are the most lax.
So, of course, there are issues. I also note that a recent report by Transparency International shows that, sadly, corruption is the norm and not the exception in public life, ranking 176 countries across the globe for corruption. We see that in the European Union there are countries like Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom which all come out in the top ten, but there are other EU countries – and I will not name names for the sake of fairness – which are ranked lower than the one-party communist state of Cuba. So, when we talk about clamping down on illicit trade at EU level, there is immediately an issue. And when we look at the EU accession countries – the countries that the EU wants to absorb – the corruption levels seen there are ones that, frankly, would make Al Capone blush and, indeed in one case, are even worse than Iran.
Fundamentally, it is the same old problem. When you try to write the same rules across 28 countries, one size never really fits all, and trying to harmonise too much ends up causing problems."@en1
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