Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-01-30-Speech-4-014"
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"en.20030130.1.4-014"2
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"Mr President, I am very happy to hear what Commissioner Nielson has to say, although I feel that we should have been talking to Commissioner Lamy today. In a question I submitted to the Commission, endorsed by several of my fellow Members – whom I would like to thank – and which has led to today’s debate, I focused on the problem, which we have addressed in the past and are continuing to address in part, of the link between trade protectionism and world hunger and poverty. You see, I believe that opening up the markets is, in political terms, more costly than granting aid. In today’s debate, too many plans are being addressed, in my opinion; it would be better to concentrate on this issue and press the Commission in this regard. Opening up the markets means challenging the market positions of extremely strong lobbies, particularly the agricultural lobby in Europe and the United States, the textile lobby in Europe and the United States, and so on. This type of policy is much more difficult, I repeat, than policies to grant aid, something which probably no-one – and I mean taxpayers – realises; but it is by opening up the markets, much more than by granting aid, that we can give hundreds of millions of people real, lasting opportunities to escape from hunger and poverty and lay the structural foundations, including legal foundations, for economic growth, and civil growth too, in a spirit of freedom and democracy.
In this regard, the European Union – and this is why I am happy to listen to the Commissioner – is not doing enough, it has to be said; it is going through the motions with the United States, but it is not doing enough: it did not do enough in Doha and it is not doing enough in the proposal on what are known as the modalities for the negotiating round concerning trade in agricultural products, which will follow Doha, maintaining excessively high protection levels and still including tariffs which will be reduced too far in the future.
This resolution is a compromise resolution, and it is showing the consequences of this: suffice it to say that the operative part contains 27 items. That is to say it sets out the sum total of human knowledge on world hunger, AIDS, poverty and so on. It retains some important points, in particular the Commission’s request to step up the implementation of the ‘Everything But Arms’ initiative by the end of 2003. We have been striving, commendably, to liberalise our markets in all products, except arms, for the world’s 48 poorest countries, but we have said that for three basic products – bananas, rice and sugar – we will delay abolishing duties until 2009. If abolishing duties has a purpose – and it does – in the fight against poverty, then please let us do it now."@en1
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