Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-22-Speech-2-017"
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"en.20070522.6.2-017"2
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".
Madam President, this is a very important report. Let me recall the background of Global Europe. In Europe we face huge challenges due to the pace of change in the global economy. This creates new opportunities, but it also generates some insecurity and understandable concerns.
We have quite an ambitious agenda ahead of us: FTA negotiations with Korea, India and ASEAN, stepping up our engagement with China and the United States, IPR enforcement, a renewed market access strategy, follow-up of the trade defence instruments Green Paper, and further work on the trade and development agenda. We do this against the background of this complex multilateral trade round. This requires careful handling. But the first six months of our Global Europe strategy demonstrate that we can move forward in parallel: we have taken concrete initiatives following our Global Europe agenda and we have put the DDA back on track.
I should like to thank the rapporteur, Mr Caspary, for his excellent work. I am very happy to see the way the report handles all these issues. I am glad that Parliament takes a high interest in the report, which is clearly demonstrated in the almost 200 amendments. I am also happy to see that the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs has been associated, given the link with the Lisbon Strategy.
Let me assure you that we have involved Parliament, and will continue to do so in the future, in the development of the Global Europe agenda. We informed the Committee on International Trade during the preparatory work of our overall communication, which I presented to the Committee on International Trade once it had been adopted by the Commission. My departments or myself have discussed all initiatives following the Global Europe agenda – i.e. the communication on China, the Green Paper on TDI, the communication on market access – at different times with Parliament.
For new FTAs, the negotiating directives have been provided to the Committee on International Trade – which is a novelty – and my departments have briefed the committee recently on the state of play. I will update the Committee on International Trade in early June on the FTA negotiations that we have just kicked off.
The Commission will consider carefully the recommendations and suggestions made by Parliament in its resolution. However, as guardian of the treaties we will do so by respecting the existing framework.
We need your continued full cooperation and your valid input on Global Europe in order to make the right choices on this ambitious journey. I am very glad that we have made good progress on this today with the Caspary report.
Our core message is clear: rejection of protectionism at home, activism in opening markets abroad. We need to look beyond tariff reduction, to the trade barriers that lie behind borders. We also need to step up our engagement with the major economies of the next generation, particularly – but not only – in Asia, where there is huge potential for growth but where Europe is not performing as strongly as it should.
Our first priority remains the WTO and the Doha Development Agenda and I want to say something about that. There is a lot at stake for the global economy and for the developing world, and I will certainly explore every avenue in the weeks ahead to make a deal possible.
For two days last week the European Union hosted the Brazilian, Indian and US ministerial negotiators just outside Brussels. We had a constructive meeting, focusing on numbers and outcomes. Achieving these outcomes will not be at all easy. However, I believe on balance that we can find our way through this negotiation and conclude the Doha Round this year, as we agreed in Delhi in April. This requires convergence amongst the G4 in the next month or so. The political commitment to that objective is high indeed at the highest political level.
The gaps are still wide between us, both inside agriculture and between agriculture and industry and services. However, they are bridgeable if all parties agree to combine sufficient ambition with sufficient flexibility. I will insist on the basic principle that there should be real cuts and effective reductions from all key players in all key areas. Real market access in agriculture is worth real farm subsidy reductions and real cuts in industrial goods tariffs.
The level of ambition of the final package in agriculture and in industrial tariffs is inextricably linked. Europe is prepared to do a lot – indeed more than others – but we are not prepared to go to the limit of our ambition if others do not do the same. Of course there must be proportionate effort between developed and developing countries.
It is also vital to remember that the bulk of the economic gains in the Doha Round will not come from agricultural market access or indeed non-agricultural market access but from commitments by WTO members to open their services markets and from cutting the red tape and costs in time and money affecting trade flows worldwide. The services and trade facilitation negotiations are operating on a different timeline to the market access negotiations, but they must not fall through the gaps.
All of us amongst the core negotiators must assume our fair share of the effort and responsibility needed for a balanced outcome in this round. We all need to look forward to the economies we want to create in the future, rather than backwards to defend the structures of the past. Yes, consolidate the gains from past market opening, but also make a contribution to the new market opening needed to boost trade growth in the future. That is the only basis on which these negotiations can conclude, and we have little over a month to do so.
However, we can and should build on the platform created by the WTO to generate new opportunities for growth by further opening markets bilaterally to trade and investment, not as an alternative but as a complement to the DDA."@en1
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