Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-11-30-Speech-3-039"
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"en.20051130.10.3-039"2
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"Mr President, in 12 days’ time our leaders meet in Hong Kong to debate the Doha Development Agenda and face the single biggest opportunity to achieve the 2015 Millennium Development Goals. Failure to agree terms will not just be a missed opportunity. It threatens parity and prosperity for the developing world; jobs, growth and security in Europe; and the future of the multilateral trade system itself.
Through the ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign, millions have made their voices heard. They are angry – and rightly so – about unfair trade rules that work against those living in poverty and they are passionate about the need for change. Grand gestures about free trade from the G8 leaders at Gleneagles now need to be transformed into a flexible negotiating strategy to deliver on all parts of an aid, trade and debt relief package.
We are witnessing, yet again, the historic struggle between free trade and protectionism. Initiatives like duty- and quota-free access for LDCs, special and differential treatment, and aid for trade cannot be held up in an agricultural silo by more advanced developing countries, especially when the offer on the table is the most substantive ever made by the EU.
The offer is not perfect. In an ideal world, it should go further, with the principle of less than full reciprocity to all NAMA negotiations, or reduced subsidies for sensitive products. That could still happen, but, for now, compromise and leadership is necessary – the kind which the more advanced developing countries will have to accept if they are to receive any benefit from the current round.
Failure in Hong Kong will allow the US and Japan to increase trade-distorting domestic support by up to five billion dollars, and Europe by up to 25 billion dollars. That is why Pascal Lamy told a forum of African ministers last week that this is what is at stake and this is why we have to bid on what is on the table although it is not sufficient.
Before allowing these talks to collapse, the world must ask itself how many more failures the WTO can suffer before it falls apart. How much more frustration can be endured before a new regionalism emerges and the poorest countries are left behind? Yet we have been told that a soft landing is all we can hope for in Hong Kong. But by late 2006, the US mandate will have run out and, with it, the chance to eradicate poverty. Our revised ambitions for Hong Kong must therefore not be a soft landing, but rather a springboard or, as Commissioner Mandelson has said, a platform for delivery early next year. On that, Commissioner, we are with you."@en1
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