Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-11-Speech-1-055"
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"en.20020311.4.1-055"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, for several hundred million people, the world is still a very unpleasant place to be, full of woe, hunger and unspeakable suffering. Without the globalisation of the past 20 years, the exponential increase in the movement of people and capital for commercial purposes, it would have been an even worse place to live. One billion two hundred thousand people live below the poverty threshold – which, I would point out, is a mere USD 1 a day – and I feel that this is the matter weighing on the civil and political consciences of all of us here, and it is right that it should.
Development aid has been mentioned, and that is all well and good. A dollar a day is what a cow lives on in Europe: I repeat, every cow in Europe receives one dollar a day.
Well then, provided that the aid has a greater effect than it has done in the past, I feel that it is right to discuss increasing the contributions of the individual wealthy States to 0.7% of GDP for aid. However, in my opinion, there is something else we must do first, and that is to open up our borders to goods from the poorest countries. Commissioner, you mentioned the ‘Everything but arms’ initiative, and rightly so. I would remind you and all the Members, however, that, for products such as rice and bananas – to put it plainly – the barriers will not be removed until 2004 and 2009 respectively. I would point out that, at Doha, the United States and Europe decreed in the WTO that the barriers should not be removed for two sectors which are fundamental for the developing countries: textiles and agriculture. These are precisely the sectors that are in need of liberalisation. I understand what Mr Watson is saying: as I see it, we should avoid a one-dimensional solution or solutions, but I do feel, nevertheless, that there is so much to do in terms of liberalising trade to help the poorest countries that it may well be there that we should focus our efforts initially.
In 2000, Sub-Saharan Africa received EUR 14 billion of aid from those same countries whose customs duties cost those countries, those communities and those people EUR 20 billion of trade opportunities. In my opinion, that is the initial action Europe should take, and it must take it even before increasing development aid.
Commissioner, you mentioned Tobin tax. I am glad to say that, as you are quite aware, Tobin tax is impossible to implement and, even if this were not so, we must not forget that trade is stimulated by lowering tariffs, not raising them, and that capital investments in developing countries increase when taxes are removed, not when additional taxes are applied. These countries need fresh investment, just as they need legal infrastructures, the legal infrastructures of the rule of law; this was pointed out in an excellent book by Hernando De Soto, a South American economist who explains that the greatest problem of the poor and developing countries is that their assets are dead capital: capital which is prevented by the absence of the rule of law from being used for the welfare of the people, economic growth, development or, where desired, redistribution of wealth.
Mr President, Commissioner, I believe that Europe must find solutions to these issues, not shift the debate away from them."@en1
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