Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-02-Speech-1-076"

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"Mr President, first of all I would like to thank the rapporteur for his report. He has shown considerable goodwill towards the various political groups in incorporating the possibilities put forward by each one. The result, as we can see, is that the balance between the various chapters is uneven. All in all, however, I think the report provides a starting point on some important issues. The chapter on food security, for example, is extremely promising, particularly where it says that ‘the fight against poverty and food insecurity must incorporate an attack on the structural causes of poverty’. It is poverty that is often the cause of malnutrition, and even famine in the worst cases. Clearly, attacking the structural causes is definitely the most intelligent approach. To date, however, it has often been thought that it was enough to open up the markets of rich countries to the products of poor countries, which I believe is only a partial solution – and then not even in every case – and that agricultural productivity in these countries needed to be increased. This does not take account of the fact that unless the poorest people are guaranteed access to land, they will still not have enough food. I therefore consider the approach of promoting access to land, water and the resources of biodiversity to be a good one, just as I consider the promotion of support for agricultural smallholdings to be a good approach. The discontinuation of export subsidies – and this is a black mark against us and against the United States – which disrupt local markets, and the cancellation of the debt which swallows up more than 40% of the GNP of the least developed countries, should also be applied in structural terms. So, those are a few proposals we should support. The second important point is the acknowledgement of the fact that access to food must be recognised as a fundamental human right. This is essential, as it means that trade rules cannot affect the exercise of this right, which is the case today. To put it plainly, we need to challenge the hierarchy of rules which means that the WTO takes precedence over everything else, and therefore over all the international conventions designed to protect fundamental goods such as water and biodiversity, not to mention access to these fundamental goods. I therefore think that all this is positive and, although I do not share the same enthusiasm for Mr Deva’s proposals with regard to the role of multinationals, I believe that overall I will be able to support this report."@en1

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