Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-24-Speech-3-232"
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"en.20030924.6.3-232"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, Minister, obviously one might well regret an error of analysis in the power relationships at Cancún. You spoke of two elephants; perhaps the third one escaped you. Fifty years after Bandung, we have Cancún and the return of the non-aligned, even if they have multiplied. More to the point, a mistake was made on 13 August 2003, with the EU-US agreement, which blurred the pro-development image which you wanted to create, especially with the ‘Everything but arms’ programme, and you gave the impression, to use your words, of a ‘duopoly’. It is certain that this preliminary agreement with the United States, which came in the wake of the 1992 Blair House agreement, put you and us in the same boat as the Texas cotton planters and their USD 3.5 billion subsidies, which are creating financial hardship for the 10 million small African planters.
Europe is certainly not responsible for this failure, however, if stopping the drift of ultraliberalism can indeed be called a failure. During the election campaign, the American administration did not want an agreement any more than, in Seattle, the African countries could not accept the contempt of paragraph 27 of the final declaration, telling them to grow something other than cotton. You, on the other hand, you have made every sacrifice, you have sacrificed our farmers in advance, you have sacrificed two out of the four Singapore issues, you were even prepared to give them the shirt off our back, provided that the textile agreement was brought to a close, but they did not want our shirt in Cancún.
What is to be done, then? Obviously we wait for the investiture of the new American president in January 2005. What is to be done about the common agricultural policy (CAP)? Good sense, justice, would want us to withdraw the rules on the CAP since it was the price to be paid for the Cancún goods which were not delivered. What is to be done about cotton? Do we sacrifice our 3% share of the world market or make the Africans a gift of what they wanted: a trust fund of USD 250 million per year organised by an international institution? What is to be done at the World Trade Organisation (WTO)? You say we have to change medieval procedures. You could say that of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), you could say that of the UN, you could say that, moreover, of the European Commission itself. Which means that the institutional question is much broader. How in future can we legally reconcile, on the one hand, inescapable globalisation at economic, media and technological levels with, on the other hand, the equally inescapable and eternal perpetuity of the political nations which, for their part, have the decision-making powers?
Obviously, no one has the answer as to how to modify the WTO. At all events, however, it needs to be sought in teleology, not theology, because there can be no doubt that the theology of the ‘free-tradist’ sect, the madrasas of Washington or Geneva which train the market fanatics, the Taliban of ultraliberalism, constitute between them an ideological error of global proportions. This is because the right aims, which will bring about the right solutions, are not ultraliberalism, privatisation or the market, but social justice, political justice and national justice.
This being so, Commissioner, we wish you good luck in your new office after June 2004, and I admit that I await with a little thrill of greedy curiosity to see where your golden parachute lands."@en1
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