Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-04-Speech-3-128"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20010404.6.3-128"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner Lamy, on the eve of the Third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries, which will be taking place in the European Parliament in Brussels in the middle of May, I think it is crucial that we debate and confirm the strategy the European Union should adopt on this matter and on that occasion. That is the precise purpose of the oral questions to the Council and the Commission that I am presenting today. I also hope to make a contribution to this with the proposal for a resolution that I am tabling.
We are all – I hope – aware of the tragic situation these countries are experiencing. They have a per capita GDP 100 times lower than that of the developed countries. They have a real growth rate of almost zero, if we take account of population growth, the fall in the price of raw products by around 30% in 1998-1999, a life expectancy of no more than 51 years, an illiteracy rate of around 50%, and the list could go on endlessly.
The worst aspect of this is that there is no light at the end of the tunnel, because many of these countries, around one-third, are still suffering from endless conflicts that sap all available resources, as well as those that are not available. I therefore feel that this conference must do more than simply repeat the diagnosis that is made so often and neither should it be a mere list, exhaustive or not, of intentions that systematically go unfulfilled. It is crucial that practical measures are adopted in the context of an overall strategy, which sets a new international economic order, strategies that are designed to comply with and strengthen the 1986 United Nations declaration, which recognises the right to sustainable development as an undeniable human right. It is also crucial that the European Union and each of the Member States adopt a position clearly endorsing this right by fighting to ensure that the current trend to reduce financial aid by the industrialised countries is reversed and that a timetable is set to increase aid by 0.7% of GDP, by acting in such a way that the 1992 Rio de Janeiro commitments are reiterated, by contributing to the definitive writing-off of the debt that is clearly smothering these countries, by making themselves available and taking action on conflict prevention, and by paying particular attention to arms trafficking and combating this trade. Finally, the Union and the Member States must adopt a position by abandoning the approach of focusing everything on the liberalisation of the markets and by genuinely working for a profound change to the rules and provisions of the WTO that penalise these countries.
On this subject, we must remember that only 12 developing countries are represented in Geneva. Furthermore, as I stated in my proposal for a resolution, we must also bear in mind that access to the markets is not, in itself, a sufficient condition for guaranteeing economic growth and that economic growth, in itself, does not automatically lead to an equitable form of development either. Therefore, just as important, if not more important, than these countries having access to the markets, we must also ensure that they are self-sufficient and have a secure supply of food, hence the law that helps them to protect their production and their rural population. In this context, I wish to say a few words about the ‘everything but arms’ initiative, which we will have the opportunity to discuss in depth in a forthcoming part-session, even if the Council has taken the unacceptable decision to ignore this Parliament. I would simply like to emphasise that this is an initiative to be welcomed, although it is of limited scope and although it contains some aspects that need to be fine-tuned. Since it is merely the first step, as has been said, it must be supplemented with various other types of measure such as those that I have just outlined.
Lastly, at a time when the need to fight poverty is being so greatly emphasised, I think I should emphasise two more specific objectives that are worth repeating: health and education. As I stated in my proposal for a resolution, the industrialised countries must make a decisive contribution to the development of programmes in these fields. Above all, as we accepted recently in this House, we must ensure that the right of the countries most affected by AIDS and other diseases to manufacture and sell the necessary drugs or to import them free from copyright costs is recognised. On these and other aspects, many of which are developed further in the resolution that I have tabled, we now await the words of the Council and the Commission."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples