Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-04-Speech-3-130"
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"en.20010404.6.3-130"2
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"Mr President, as the President of the Council has just pointed out, this third UN conference on LDCs will take place in Brussels in May. The aim of this conference will be first of all to assess the results of the action programme which was launched in 1990, to take stock of what has been done in the meantime in the way of development aid, debt reduction, investment and trade. Another aim will be to draw up a new action programme for the next ten years, and we have agreed, in a joint agreement with the United Nations, that this conference should also give its attention to a certain number of measures having immediate effect, so that it will not yield to the temptation of taking refuge in too many generalities.
Preparations for this conference are underway. Obviously, as joint host, the European Union has a special interest in making this conference a success: teams from the Commission and a certain number of Commissioners are working on it together.
We shall try to ensure that a programme of sound action emerges from this conference so as to give a framework of encouragement to the development efforts of these 49 or 50 countries, once again trying to make it all as specific as possible.
It is with this in mind that we have ensured – and we at the Commission would like to thank the Swedish Presidency for this – that the decisions taken on the basis of this initiative, ‘Everything but arms’, are taken in good time so that this initiative can constitute an achievement of the May conference. That is probably, at the present time, the most visible issue and measure that this conference will have helped to raise and accelerate, and that is no mean achievement We must now try to use this conference as a lever to encourage other trading partners in the world to improve market access for exports from the least-developed countries.
Although we are so keen on this initiative, that is not because we think it is sufficient in itself. It is clear that, without an appropriate environment and other aid efforts, the vast majority of the LDCs are incapable, on their own, of taking advantage of commercial openings. We must therefore supplement this strong signal, this effort to which we have committed ourselves, by other measures aimed at effectively increasing the export capacity of the countries in question, and helping them to become integrated into the multilateral worldwide trading system.
We therefore intend to supplement this initiative by other measures, a certain number of which are connected with trade, by technical assistance as regards the administrative capacity of these countries, and by increasing what we do in the context of the integrated fund which links us with the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, in a technical assistance project which deals with commercial issues in Geneva. Having said that, there are also other trade mechanisms which we should look at, in order to satisfy ourselves that they are not holding back or unduly restricting the opening up of markets to the least developed countries. I am thinking, in particular, of all the rules on health and plant health, or of various obstacles to trade, where we should not reduce the standards that we have set, because our own public want to keep them, but where we could ensure that our efforts to provide technical assistance are effectively targeted so that they enable those countries to comply with them. I am thinking, in particular, of all aspects of health and plant health.
We believe that these conditions for access to the market will help to improve the volume of foreign investment in those countries, provided that they are accompanied by an effective increase in their export capacity, and we should like to take the opportunity of this conference to go further in improving the promotion of investment in those countries, in particular by better use of the existing multilateral mechanisms, perhaps by using more actively what is already available in the way of guarantees for investment in least developed countries.
This being the case, let us not hide behind speeches that are too politically correct. We must also be clear. It is up to these countries themselves to create an environment that is more investment-friendly, by means of internal policies which we can support, and advise on, but which are, after all, the result of internal policy decisions which are sometimes difficult to take, and we are not responsible for this difficulty in taking decisions. From this point of view it is important that the role of each party should be clear.
We must remember that these measures that I have just spoken about, which come into effect immediately, are only part of the result. They have to be there in order to lend a certain amount of credibility to the action programme for the next ten years. This action programme will serve as an itinerary. I believe that it is very important to have an itinerary in this area, and it must be one that we can control together. In fact I believe – and my Commission colleagues share this view – that it is only by exerting stronger collective pressure that we shall be able to speed up the abolition of poverty and the promotion of sustainable development in these countries, so that one of these days perhaps we shall be able, to quote Mr Miranda’s expression, to see the light at the end of the tunnel."@en1
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