Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-07-06-Speech-4-046"
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"en.20060706.4.4-046"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, I am in favour of Fair Trade. For me, it means free trade, trade without customs and quotas in an environment where free enterprising spirit and the right to property are respected. In parts, this report has a different perspective to mine, and in places it seems almost to strive for the opposite.
The report mixes up two different kinds of Fair Trade. When companies and organisations themselves define what they think is fair and then offer the consumer products produced according to the criteria thus defined, this is a demonstration of consumer power, which is a very good thing.
The other kind of Fair Trade is when politicians involve themselves in a voluntary business relationship and lay down conditions and prices that they deem to be fair so that they can then call this Fair Trade. For me, this is socialism and something very bad. The report proposes providing companies’ Fair Trade with a legal basis of its own and setting political goals and criteria. This is to take consumer power, which is so important, and turn it into some sort of socialist planned economy. It amazes me that so many MEPs think this is desirable.
Despite the fact that Fair Trade labelling is an expression of consumer power and something very positive, I would still like to conclude by calling on everyone, both politicians and citizens, to continue to be critical consumers, particularly in relation to goods bearing Fair Trade labelling. They often give more money and influence to organisations controlled by leftist ideology and opposition to free trade than to the really poor in underdeveloped countries. Tropicana and Dole orange juice probably do more to contribute to development and fighting poverty than, for instance, the example we have here from Oxfam.
The European Parliament’s unthinking embrace of Oxfam is in itself a good example of the crazy turn things can take when we are not critical in embracing Fair Trade products. The Oxfam orange juice sold here in Parliament, for example, comes from Cuba. Until someone has explained to me how it can be called Fair Trade when I buy state-produced juice and my money goes to a communist dictatorship I demand that all Oxfam products be removed from the range of goods on offer in Parliament, because that is not Fair Trade."@en1
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