Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-07-05-Speech-4-013"

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"Madam President, last week I took part in a conference in Stockholm, during which, at the request of his African friends, the African chairman of the plenary session, to which I contributed, began the session with the following words: ‘I was asked to bring back to Africa the cure for AIDS, the cure for poverty, the cure for political conflict and the cure for non-availability of information technology – the four diseases that are increasing the already wide gap between North and South’. It was not of course without reason that he said this. In 1960, the richest 20% of the world’s population had an income 30 times greater than that of the poorest 20%. In 1990, the figure was 60% and in 1997 it was 74%, and there is no doubt that it has increased since 1997. According to statistics in ‘The Economist’ of 16 June, the world has more rich people than ever before. The unfortunate conclusion he drew following the meeting was, ‘So it seems that I have to return to Africa without the cure for our four ongoing major crises’. We have a problem with many of our meetings. How much real success is there in changing things? We can hope that the G8 meeting, at which the individual EU countries, the Commission and the presidency are represented, can perhaps play its part in moving things on a little. If these meetings do not succeed in producing more striking results, there is of course the risk that the fear of globalisation will become greater and that we shall therefore see still larger demonstrations, for part of the problem is, of course, that people in general simply think that globalisation is a bad thing, while we politicians are of the opinion that it should, in a way, be a good thing and we know that it could, in fact, be so. However, we fail to see the results, and the documents we obtain indicate greater and greater differences. I therefore hope that we get to tackle some of the real problems. I would therefore urge the Commission – and not, therefore, Mr Patten but obviously Mr Prodi – really to focus upon the desperation of the developing countries, for this is of course the world’s greatest problem today. When the discussion turns to setting up a fund, providing debt relief etc., one must also remember to talk about ‘additional money’ so that we leave behind the situation in which it is the same money that circulates through the system and is never paid out."@en1

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