Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-16-Speech-4-014"
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"en.20000316.1.4-014"2
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"Mr President, we regard the title of the agreement which is the subject of Mrs Ferrer’s report as at best incomplete, at worst dissembling. It would in fact be more accurate to refer to a European Union-NAFTA agreement rather than an agreement associating the European Union with Mexico only. For this agreement, which the rapporteur herself describes as the most important one the European Union has ever signed with a third country, will not only affect our relations with Mexico but will also have implications for our relations with the North and Central American countries as a whole.
The Ferrer report, following what is clearly now the fashion in this Parliament, sets itself the objective of helping to create a new framework that will enable European enterprises to compete on equal terms with the United States and Canada. That is a totally unrealistic objective for the near future and it is quite obvious for whose benefit the measures advocated in the text are designed. Indeed, it must be quite clear to everyone that the decline in European exports to Mexico is the result of the NAFTA agreement, which turns the entire area into a single free trade area.
Does anyone seriously think, for example, that whatever the details of the system we set up, European textiles and cars, which are currently taxed at 35% and 23%, will soon be able to compete on equal terms with American exports of the same products, which are taxed at 1.8%? Under these conditions, how can anyone justify the fact that the respective markets will be liberalised at different rates, to the detriment of the Europeans? Finally, there is a real fear that this will have an immediate and tangible impact on employment in Europe in the sectors opened to Mexican products, especially in already vulnerable sectors – such as textiles, to name but one. These sectors do not need to face further competition, in return for opening up to markets blocked by the Americans.
Moreover, the supposedly reassuring formulation of the rules on protecting designations of origin, and more generally on intellectual property, are more likely to have the opposite effect; their vagueness and wording seem more of a threat than a guarantee."@en1
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