Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-12-11-Speech-2-046"
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"en.20011211.3.2-046"2
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"The EU’s second goal is to improve the governance of globalisation. You know what the Commission’s views are on this. Today we face a deficit of multilateral rules, which calls into question the equality between economic players, the transparency of transactions and the preservation of certain social values. This has given rise to fear or concern in some quarters.
As you know, and those of you who were in Doha made sure of this, your concerns about consumer protection, health, education, public service and cultural diversity were taken into consideration. The negotiating programme adopted in Doha certainly does not commit us to go beyond the limits that were set both by the Council and by Parliament in this area.
My final point concerns agriculture. I will now hand over to Franz Fischler who can tell you a little more about this subject. Here too, however, I believe we achieved our main objective, which was to ensure that the Union remained capable of taking forward the common agricultural policy at a rate that is and will be decided by the EU institutions.
To conclude, in my capacity as, shall we say, principal negotiator, let me tell you that one of the keys to success in this business was our work with the Belgian Presidency and, via the Belgian Presidency, with the Member States, whose presence is not always entirely convenient in such circumstances, and with those of you who were there at the meeting. I have said it in public. I think it is perfectly acceptable for me to say it to you in a definitive manner.
Markets have become globalised more rapidly than institutions and regulatory instruments. This is true in the economic field as in the social and environmental field.
As I said, you know our views in this area; we need to establish coherence between all the aspects of the multilateral system and we need more constant, clear and definite relations between its various pillars. The WTO is one of those pillars. It is not the only one and it cannot support the entire weight of this coherence by itself.
In this regard and, once again, in line with our mandate, Doha represents a considerable step forward. In terms of regulating the markets, global rules on investment, on competition, on public procurement and on trade facilitation now form part of the work programme. Regarding the environment, Doha will help establish greater international coherence by providing for negotiations to clarify the status of the multilateral agreements on the environment in the context of the WTO. As you know, the Union had to struggle hard to obtain this decision. I believe it was right to do so because this is a first step towards establishing greater coherence between the various pillars of international governance, in this case between the trade and environment pillars. In the event of inconsistency or potential conflict, we did not want this pillar to continue depending entirely on the WTO instrument for settling disputes, whatever the virtues of that instrument.
With regard to one aspect of the international governance issues, we did not hide our disappointment at the outcome of the negotiations, although we accepted it. I am referring to the social issues. We did not achieve general agreement on forging the kind of clear link we had hoped to see between the International Labour Organisation and other organisations, including the WTO. We regret that. The developing countries were politically opposed to this idea and we could not overcome their opposition. That is not a reason for giving up. On the contrary, I believe we have to draw on every available multilateral means of putting this idea forward, because it represents the Union’s view and formed part of our mandate, especially as regards strengthening the multilateral aspect of the World Trade Organisation.
Having failed to succeed in relation to this multilateral aspect, we will be developing the other aspects of Community policy, as we have now begun to do, in particular the bilateral and the unilateral parts. From that point of view, the agreement we reached yesterday in the Council, by a qualified majority, on renewing the system of generalised preferences – an agreement that quite considerably strengthens the social conditions on which trade preferences depend – is good news. It shows all those who believe this point is important that if we do not manage to make progress on every front, or at least on the unilateral front, this agreement on the part of the Council, with the assent of your Parliament, which had supported and upheld this position, and with the agreement of the Economic and Social Committee, marked a major step forward yesterday.
On the question of the way the WTO operates, your Parliament had expressed certain concerns. Here we have one piece of good news, namely that Doha was indeed more open and that thanks to the rather clever variable system of plenary meetings, restricted meetings and regional participation, the African continent, for instance, was able to play a very good part in the decision-making. The not so good news is that for the time being no decision has been reached during this negotiating round on reforming the World Trade Organisation itself. To tell the truth, nobody was in favour of this reform, given the inevitable risk of deadlock. I think the question has simply been postponed and that it will come up again before the round we launched in Doha is concluded.
On the specific question of relations with the national parliaments or your Parliament, the proposal to incorporate a reference to closer association between Member State parliaments was not accepted. This was because of pressure by a number of developing countries that were not really in favour of the idea and because of the American position, which could be described as reluctant, to say the least. In any case, there were not enough representatives of the American parliamentary authorities to deal with this question seriously. So that is where we stand at the moment. In fact, the Commission and Parliament have already been working in the spirit of transparency, information and consultation that we had hoped to promote within the WTO. I believe we are doing so to the satisfaction of those of you who are interested in these matters and I fully intend to continue along these lines.
Our final objective is the pursuit of liberalisation of trade as such: to liberate trade in goods, services and investments, to contribute to global growth and, therefore, to reducing poverty, provided we make progress with the rules on the fair distribution of trade benefits. In this respect, the results are entirely in line with what we had hoped. In regard to abolishing customs duties on goods, for instance, we are clearly targeting tariff levels. This applies to the liberalisation of services – the timetable has been decided and the negotiations should open up considerable opportunities to EU companies."@en1
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