Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-16-Speech-1-161"
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"en.20060116.17.1-161"2
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Mr President, in response to the last question – which bears almost no relation whatsoever to the subject matter of this debate – let me say that the honourable Member makes a rather good case for Russia and Ukraine being brought into the WTO, because they would be subject to international rules and to the dispute settlement machinery of the WTO. However, for them to enjoy that privilege, they have to accept certain undertakings unambiguously beforehand, and that remains the subject of continuing discussion between us.
I should like to mention another issue that constantly arises – quite rightly – in these negotiations, concerning investment in services and a service-based infrastructure of developing countries. Liberalisation in services is as important a part of the inbuilt agenda of this round as agriculture. I want to stress that our purpose in these negotiations is to boost commerce, because trade drives inter-economic growth. But boosting commerce, to my mind, is not the same as commercialising what other countries and governments legitimately want to keep within the public realm. That is their choice. That is the policy space to which they are entitled. No part of this negotiation concerning the liberalisation of services seeks to erode, let alone remove, the right to regulate public services.
Take the example of water, as one Member already mentioned: where are developing countries going to get the capital investment, the transfer of technology, the transfer of management skills to operate the most efficient water industry in their countries that they can possibly get, to bring about the distribution that they so desperately need, if it is without foreign investment, foreign know-how and foreign transfer of technology? We must keep a sense of perspective about this whilst recognising and safeguarding developing countries’ rights to regulation.
With regard to agriculture – and incidentally, there is no question of excluding agriculture from these negotiations; anyone who ever dreamed that might be either desirable or possible has long since seen that dream disappear, never to return – we have an obligation to liberalise trade in agriculture, but we have to do it in a way and at a pace that are manageable and absorbable by European farm communities and that strike the right balance between the interests of different sorts of developing country; and, as I say, they are not the same.
However, as European agriculture changes and evolves, the importance of specialised production and products and of those products associated with geographical indications becomes ever greater. That is why the protection of GIs remains not only an important but also an indispensable condition for our completion of this round. I say this not only to Mrs Mann but also to others. This is a single undertaking and that means that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. In my view that is very important. It is a necessary protection that each WTO member has to ensure that their vital interests are not shunned or overlooked. If there were no single undertaking, no principle that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, then we would be much weakened and not only us but also other WTO members would be less able to protect their vital interests. In my view GIs are of vital interest.
In conclusion – and I am very much aware that I have not responded to many of the points made or taken up a number of the points – NAMA is an important issue; I shall address these other issues in remarks I shall be making in a week’s time – let me just say that these multilateral trade talks are very important. Why? Because multilateralism is important. Multilateral processes and institutions are important. Yes, the European Union
pay extra into this round and into this system in order to keep alive, to strengthen and to carry forward the multilateral values and principles that are at the heart of this round. We will not pay indefinitely and we are not a bottomless pit, but it is true that we are prepared to pay for our principles, not only for the sake of our principles, but also because in a multilateral trade round the potential benefits for the global economy and for us in Europe and for the poor and needy people around the world are multiplied to a far greater extent through a multilateralisation of the agreement that we reach than any set of bilateral agreements between ourselves and other countries or regions could possibly achieve.
I am not ignoring the bilateral agenda. Indeed, we have negotiations, whether it be ongoing, in the case of the Gulf States; ASEAN, potentially, when we have our roadmap put in place; and Mercosur. Incidentally, we need to consider what we are going to keep back from this multilateral agreement for our bilateral Mercosur negotiation. First and foremost we must make the multilateral talks successful. It will be a huge challenge in the coming months to achieve that, the way in which we can strengthen international trade rules to drive up standards of trade and social and labour rights, and trade in environment as well. There is a very great deal to achieve in a relatively short space of time. If in the coming months I can get as much negotiation in as Mrs Kinnock did in her one-and-a-half minutes, I will be travelling at a reasonable rate. It is a wee bit challenging for me to do that. However, given the number of things you have mentioned and registered, which we will carry on in our discussion tomorrow morning, if I can match a part of the same rate of progress I will not be doing badly.
I will try and be brief, but a very large number of points and issues have been raised in this debate. I cannot do them all justice. I welcome the ideas that have been put forward by Members. I hear the criticisms that have been expressed about what we have done and needless to say I am grateful for the praise and compliments, but I am only too well aware that praise comes to a negotiator when he does not do anything wrong. The test for the negotiator is for him to do something right. That is harder, and that is the challenge held out before me in the coming months.
I am in complete agreement with the Member who said that we need to strengthen the rights of the European Parliament in relation to trade – I have always said that – and, in the spirit of the times, given that our relationship is going so swimmingly, I cannot think of anything I would rather have than a strengthened relationship between us.
A word to those who have expressed concern about the international criticism that has been directed at the European Union. It is criticism up to a point, but a better word for it is propaganda. All is fair in love and war in international trade negotiations, and we have to understand that where our negotiating partners arrive at a convergence of interests, notably in respect of agriculture, you will find a cacophony of voices directed against us, all of which have one goal in mind, which is to place pressure on the unity of the 25 Member States: to seek to divide the 25 and as a result, find advantage for themselves in the negotiations.
That is why the unity that we found in Hong Kong is so important. It is not just a question of giving ourselves the comfort of solidarity amongst ourselves; unity of argument and message is the best riposte to the propaganda that will be aimed against us. As it happens, my judgement is that whilst the propaganda will not fall away and its decibel count will not go down, whilst those critical voices will maintain their shrillness in years to come, they are becoming less convincing and finding a weaker reception amongst many of the international commentariat who follow these negotiations in detail. I have found, since Hong Kong, a rather more balanced and nuanced appreciation of the content of these negotiations than I found on previous occasions.
But we do not just have to find responses to people’s criticisms and propaganda, as a number of Members have quite rightly argued; we also have to reach out and find allies. We are not going to complete this round unless we are able to find some accommodation between ourselves and the interests and negotiating objectives of the G20 group of emerging economies. They are not homogeneous, but they have an effective discipline which I welcome. We would not be able to negotiate as we are; we would not have the prospect of finding a satisfactory outcome if we did not have those G20 countries, the emerging economies organised as they are and brought together as coherently as they are, in these negotiations. I think therefore that post-Cancún, yes, it gives us a lot of grief sometimes in the European Union to find our negotiating partners so well organised, but on the other hand the opposite of organisation is chaos and chaos is the enemy of a successful trade round. However, just as I welcome our negotiating partners in the G20, I think those Members who have pointed out tonight that we need to cement our coalition of interests and our relationship with the ACP countries are also correct.
One thing I have learned and that has been borne in on me since I took up this post – something that some Members might bear in mind, given some of the contributions that have been made this evening – is that when you appeal to, or respond to, or try to accommodate the interests of certain developing countries, more often than not you will find yourself taking away from, or denying opportunities to, or dissatisfying, other developing countries. And so it is the case that when we are criticised, as the Commission has been on one or two occasions this evening, for not taking agricultural reform fast enough or far enough for the interests and benefit of certain rather more competitive developing countries, we have to understand that during the course of that reform, the further it goes or the faster it goes, the more pain we will be causing other developing countries to experience. So when I travel around, whether it be in Africa or the Caribbean, the street demonstrations that I face are not amongst the poor and exploited of the world who want us to go further in agricultural reform; in my experience of street demonstrations it has been people from some very poor, needy and deprived developing countries who are asking us to go slower in our agricultural reform, not faster.
To an extent this is a question of compensating developing countries for the adjustment that is necessitated by that agricultural reform. Mrs Kinnock has quite rightly highlighted the issue of sugar. The Commission’s approach – and I say this on behalf of Mrs Fischer Boel as well as myself – is clear. We proposed EUR 190 million per year for each year between 2007 and 2013 for our proposed sugar action plan agreed with ACP countries. But the compromise that was found on the budget means a 20% reduction of the money that we thought we would have available for that action plan under the relevant heading. That is an unattractive prospect, if we are going to have, through budgetary constraints, to retreat from the original ambition of the plan that we set forward.
Tonight I invite the European Parliament to help the Commission ensure that there is enough money to make that action plan a reality and to make sure that it genuinely meets the needs of those sugar-dependent ACP countries with whom we have had such an important historical relationship – a relationship we want to carry over as meaningfully to the future – and to help us ensure that that budgetary allocation is sustained. I will certainly be pushing to maintain the original EUR 190 million, but we in the Commission are not the budgetary authority; you and the Council are. Therefore I appeal to you to exert your best efforts to bring this about."@en1
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