Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-22-Speech-2-079"
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"en.20070522.8.2-079"2
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"There are three key concepts that the Commission needs to bear in mind in the negotiations: to listen, not to compel and not to become stressed. We must listen to the ACP countries’ demands.
These negotiations are not conducted on an equal footing. You, Mr Mandelson, have hundreds of experts at your disposal. The ACP countries, for their part, have just a few. We have huge economic power. They have only the beginnings of trade and industry. We can buy up the whole of their trade and industry. They are scarcely able to buy food for the day. When conditions differ so greatly, it is important for us to listen to their demands and to try to meet them.
Economic Partnership Agreements must exist to promote their development, not to increase our profits. We must not, therefore, engage in compulsion. If they do not wish to open up a market, we must do as is stated in paragraph 17 of the resolution and not force them to do so. All trade experts educated in neo-liberal thinking believe that reduced tariffs are always a good thing and that free trade is always better than fair trade, but the reality shows that that is not the case. Moreover, it is reality that our negotiating partners inhabit. Mistaken liberalisation can lead to people’s deaths. You can explain what you believe, but allow them to take the decisions. If they are wrong, the mistake is theirs. It is easier to live with deficiencies for which one is oneself responsible and which one can change than to live in extreme poverty imposed by others. Reciprocity is unnecessary. Allow them to decide about it for themselves. We can live with or without reciprocity, but they can die because of it.
Finally, we must not become stressed. I therefore hope that the House will delete recital F and approve Amendment 4. Allow the negotiations to take the time required and, in the meantime, allow the General System of Preferences to remain in place. They can then safely continue to sell to us without having a sword of Damocles hanging over them. Together with the ACP countries, we 27 EU countries constitute a dominant group within the World Trade Organisation. If we wish, we can together say that we need to extend the period of the negotiations or else devise alternatives to economic partnership agreements."@en1
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