Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-16-Speech-1-130"
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"en.20060116.17.1-130"2
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".
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Parliament’s Committee on International Trade, which it is my honour to chair, has participated in the preparation of the WTO Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong and is currently continuing to work with a view to the next stages of the negotiation of the Development Agenda.
There are three issues that I would like to mention to the Commissioner.
First of all, the negotiation on services, which is essential from the Union’s point of view, is currently subject to a different timetable to that of the negotiation on agriculture and access to the markets. Commissioner, how do you intend to ensure a balance amongst the concessions in these three sectors while also respecting the timetable set?
Secondly, the issue of geographical indications, which is very important to the European Union, particularly in order to safeguard the future of agriculture as compensation for the elimination of subsidies and also in order to defend our quality products, appears to be suffering a delay. How does the Commissioner believe that this delay can be alleviated?
Finally, with regard to the situation of the emerging countries, who are partners of ours, who may benefit from the ‘everything but arms’ initiative, which is an important European initiative, and who may see their preferences eroded, how do you intend to secure the support of the countries close to us for a possible agreement in which we must create a balance between advantages and disadvantages?
This is clearly a complex process, and one in which we must be able to achieve a balance between the Union’s offensive interests, its defensive interests and the legitimate ambitions of the developing countries, and also to convince our fellow citizens that our interests are better protected within a WTO which is stronger, more open and more democratic.
Finally, Madam President, on behalf of the Committee on International Trade, I would like to thank Commissioner Mandelson and Commissioner Fischer Boel and their teams of negotiators for the efforts they have made and the attention they have paid to us. I can assure them that they can count on solid, but critical, support from the European Parliament, with a view to achieving these objectives.
As you know, a delegation from Parliament followed the Conference in situ. I have been able to tell Commissioner Mandelson that, in Hong Kong, the Commission, the European Parliament and the Council were more united than in Brussels, and that was important in this difficult negotiation. We are now at the stage of evaluating what happened in Hong Kong and preparing the recommendations for the future negotiation.
The Committee is going to produce an initiative report, the rapporteur for which will be Mr Papastamkos. We hope that it can be approved in April, so that the conclusions can be on the table in time for 30 April.
With regard to the results, the most significant thing we can say about this stage is that we have reached the end of it. I share the Commissioner’s view that the result are insufficient to make the meeting a success, but sufficient to prevent it from being seen as a failure.
The progress made in relation to agricultural export subsidies, to the production and trade in cotton and access to markets free of tariffs and export quotas for the least developed countries is not inconsiderable.
It is important to confirm to our partners in the developing countries that we remain true to our commitment that this should be a development round.
Nevertheless, we are still a very long way from achieving a global and balanced result and there is still a lot of work to be done if we want this round to be completed by the end of this year, in view of the limitation represented by the expiry of the United States Trade Promotion Authority, granted by Congress.
In Hong Kong, a series of intermediate stages were defined, which include such important elements as defining the methods for eliminating the different types of agricultural export subsidies, the reduction in internal support for agriculture and improving the conditions for access to the agricultural markets. We shall have to assess jointly whether the necessary, though not sufficient, conditions are in place to achieve a global agreement.
As I said before, an important meeting is going to take place in Geneva at the end of April, at which we believe the European Parliament should be represented according to the methods we agree. We shall be constantly and vigilantly following this issue."@en1
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