Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-05-11-Speech-3-290"
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"en.20050511.21.3-290"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, what the Commission was mandated to do in 1999 it showed itself incapable of doing, not only at the negotiations in Seattle, but also at those in Cancún. I believe this was the right thing to happen; it should have led to the Commission being given a modified mandate, one that focussed not on more deregulation and the opening up of markets, but on organising real fair trade between the various countries of the world, which are developed to greatly differing degrees.
Fair trade means the introduction of a system in which everybody involved can see that they have a real chance of developing, and are enabled to seize this chance. For some countries, that may mean protecting their markets until such time as the regional economy has become sufficiently strong to stand up to foreign competition. In other regions, this may mean opening up a market in order to offer other providers export opportunities. Rather than exerting even more pressure to bring about the opening up of markets, this would mean reducing the pressure, which has become a permanent feature. Agreements such as GATS or NAMA can rob developing countries of the chance to build up their own industrial and service sectors and, at the same time, to develop high environmental and social standards.
It is the current debate on textile imports, though, that shows us the other side of the coin – what the opening up of markets means to the industrialised nations. When talking about the Doha development agenda, the term itself indicates that development has to be on the agenda, and that it must not just be about the opening up of markets. Issues such as preventive health care, education, social protection and environmentally-friendly production methods are inseparably part of it.
This is more important to us than the Singapore issues, even if they appear to have been reduced in number from four to two. What matters to us is that trade systems should come into being that make it possible for the prices of coffee, cocoa, textiles, bananas, cotton, sugar, and many, many other products to be kept stable. I believe that the right approach is not more competition, but more cooperation.
Export subsidies for large-scale agri-businesses must be done away with. No attempt must be made to deregulate public services, in particular the supply of water. Alongside the WTO, the relevant UN institutions – UNCTAD or the ILO, for example – must be given greater weight in development matters. The European Union must come to give a different answer to that which it has given hitherto to the developing countries’ calls for the implementation of ‘Mode 4’.
Demanding of the developing countries that they should open up their markets to goods, services and capital, at the same time as the European Union denies less-qualified workers access to its labour markets, in which there is supposedly freedom of movement, has nothing to do with equal rights. If you want world trade, you first have to ensure balanced development, or else what will be promoted by trade will not be progress, but growing disparities between the poor and the rich.
What I really do want to say to Mr Caspary is that those who regard ‘Attac’ as a radical group have not grasped the idea that it is from the presence of differing views that democracy draws its life!"@en1
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