Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-11-30-Speech-3-059"
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"en.20051130.10.3-059"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, over the coming days and weeks, we will be taking one of the most important decisions to affect Europe.
I would like to express the warmest thanks to Mr Pearson, and especially to Commissioner Mandelson, for demonstrating their awareness of the fact that the first thing required for there to be agreement in the WTO round is a great deal of work. It demands good and careful preparation, the development of a strategy, and, at the end of the day, it demands that they bring home an outcome that satisfies everyone concerned. Very difficult though it may be to bring about a win-win situation, such a thing is possible. The worst-case scenario for all concerned is that we come back from Hong Kong with the message that nothing has been achieved and that everything will continue in the same old way. We can certainly take it as read that, if everything continues in the same old way, nothing will remain the way it was, and that we will be running the risk of provoking a new trade war.
That was our experience at the time of the steel dispute, when all at once our telephones in this House started jumping off the hook, with businesses and trade unions phoning up to tell us that hundreds and thousands of people were having to be laid off because 100% mark-ups for customs duties were making exports impossible. After all, one third of our jobs depend on exports, and small and medium-sized enterprises are affected most of all, for they employ two thirds of our workers, who in turn pay 80% of the taxes.
I call on the Commissioner, and also the Council, to take genuine action in order to get, at last, the Singapore criteria, which are so crucial to the development of family firms and of small and medium-sized enterprises, seriously discussed again at international level and an examination set in motion of what approach will enable us to move forward in the negotiations. What is at stake, quite simply, is equal access to markets, something that is very important to all of us, in that it will enable our exports, in future, to help the Lisbon Strategy work."@en1
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