Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-10-14-Speech-4-012"
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"en.20041014.3.4-012"2
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"I hope that today’s debate will only mark the beginning of a useful and necessary collaboration between institutions and between committees of this Parliament on a question of the greatest importance for the Committee on Development, a committee that I have the honour – not too greatly merited perhaps – to chair, and which I am representing today.
I shall stop here, aware that I have highlighted only a few aspects of this difficult subject, but that is all I can do in the time allotted to me. As for the rest, I very much want to hear my dear fellow Member, Mr Barón Crespo, Chairman of the Committee on International Trade, and, of course, my other fellow Members, as well as the replies – which I trust will be detailed – that the Commission and the Council may possibly provide. I truly hope that we can have a fruitful collaboration that can yield positive results.
Since its creation in 1971, the Generalised System of Preferences has become an essential instrument of the development policy of the European Union. I should also like to emphasise the good name that accrues to the European Community, in that it was the first to put this system into practice from 1971 and today, in actual fact, it is still the major donor in terms of trade concessions to developing countries.
In examining the Commission communication, we started from a principle according to which the main objective of the Generalised System of Preferences is, and must above all continue to be, the economic and social development of those countries, pursued in the spirit of international solidarity that should govern the foreign policy of the Union. In this context, we welcome the objectives put in place by the communication, namely the simplification of the regimes, the concentration of preferences on those developing countries that need them most and, above all, the promotion of sustainable development.
We are fully cognisant that in order to attain these objectives the current system will have to undergo substantial reform. We cannot, however, ignore the fact that any change to the current system will have considerable effects in the countries that currently benefit from that system. There will be favourable effects but also, as representatives of various countries have pointed out, adverse effects. It is for this reason that the European Parliament has wished to make its voice heard from the very beginning of the reform process, namely to take note of the concerns, the opinions and the points of view of stakeholder countries.
It seems to me that this democratic necessity is even more essential and important at this time, when the Commission has, to tell the truth, most regrettably not consulted adequately with interested parties before formulating its proposals. One must take into account, on the other hand, that the Council did take the opportunity to consult the European Parliament at its last meeting.
The opinions I am expressing today, as Chairman of the Committee on Development, are therefore only preliminary opinions, but they also appear in the motion that all the political groups have deemed it advisable to sign. Hence I trust that today’s debate will nevertheless help to clarify the issue and above all will allow the Commission to include some of our demands in the regulation that must be adopted by the Commissioners probably on 20 October. Consequently, I should wish to request the Commission to reply to the questions that we have posed in our examination.
In detail, there are three issues on which I should like to insist: the graduation mechanism, the functioning of GSP+ and the reform of the system of rules of origin. With regard to the first, while we welcome the simplification of the graduation mechanism, the fact that the Commission is proposing to base it exclusively on the criterion of market share, leaving aside any indicators of development and poverty, almost fills us with dismay. We cannot overlook the fact that these arrangements could have very negative consequences for major exporters. Without being necessarily hostile, we should therefore like to join the Commission and the Council in studying the consequences and the modality of this proposal in great detail in the coming months.
In relation to the new GSP+ system, which we consider to be of benefit, given that it supports sustainable development, it seems essential to us, however, to define criteria that are clear, reliable and at the same time realistic. We should like to see a firm commitment by the Commission to supply the necessary technical assistance.
In conclusion, I should like to stress that one of the obstacles to an efficient use of the system has, as we know, been the system of rules of origin. That is why we welcome a substantial reform of the system which favours regional expansion, although we hope that good intentions will result in concrete initiatives: a proposal, therefore, and an examination of the systems applied by other countries."@en1
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