Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-03-Speech-3-370"
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"en.20080903.26.3-370"2
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"Mr President, I certainly intend to press on with determination in the negotiations to complete the Doha world trade deal. It is very important indeed and I am grateful to the honourable Member for reinforcing that.
I did not actually intend to comment on or respond to this debate. The reason I do so is because I feel that, in some of the contributions that have been made, there has been demonstrated not only a bit of a misunderstanding about the provision of services in the 21st century, particularly amongst developing countries, but, beyond that, a false ideological boundary is being put in place through the remarks of some of those who have contributed to this debate between what they call ‘commercial’ and ‘non-commercial’ services. I have to say that spending most of my time as I do in the world and amongst developing countries, this distinction and this ideological boundary that has been described in this debate is increasingly fading without trace. It is not the case, as Mrs Lucas has suggested, amongst WTO members that developing countries increasingly see trade in services as quite different and separate from trade in goods. Actually, the exact opposite trend is occurring in the WTO and in trade negotiations. Increasingly, developing countries are bringing trade in services into these negotiations. I think that it is wrong – and I speak as somebody who is a social democrat of many decades standing who, I think and I hope, has a developed social conscience – to put forward a proposition in the case of services that state provision is good and that private provision is bad. This is not only out-of-date thinking; it is contrary to the interests of developing countries and to the very needs of the poorest members of those countries and those communities who we should be seeking to stand up for with our values as Europeans and our principles as Europeans.
So I hope that we will not follow and not reinforce, if I can respectfully suggest, this extraordinary equation that you can put the needs of poorest people first by denying to developing countries the opportunities to supply not only water and energy and telecoms more efficiently and more cheaply for consumers, but also supply health care and education using investment, technology, management skills and techniques from a variety of international sources on a competitive basis.
This most certainly does not mean that these services therefore should go unregulated. I do not support monopolistic behaviour, price-fixing and cartels, but this goes to the very point that the honourable Member was making. Regulation by national governments in developing countries is, of course, essential in relation to these services, but please let us not create or give support to what I believe is, as I have described, a false ideological boundary between the commercial and the non-commercial. Both are equally valid if properly regulated and if properly serving the needs of the people who are desperately in need of more services of this kind, more efficiently provided and more cheaply in many cases."@en1
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