Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-23-Speech-2-412"
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, please allow me first of all to thank Mrs Lucas for her report, which draws attention to the overwhelming need to face up to the problem of the destruction of tropical forests.
Despite its imperfections, the agreement signed in 2006 is an important step in this direction and its entry into force can only further the cause that you quite rightly defend in your report. This agreement has a much greater environmental and social bias than its 1994 predecessor. It is clear that the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO) cannot put an end to over-exploitation and illegal logging on its own, since the main reasons for these often come from outside the forestry sector. For example, these might be the permanent or temporary replacement of forests by farmland, the relatively low profitability of forest maintenance compared with other land use and, quite simply, poverty. In this difficult context, this organisation has become one of the major players taking practical measures aimed at improving the sustainable management of tropical forests. It therefore deserves the attention and support of the Community.
In terms of the legal basis for this agreement, the Commission has conducted an analysis of the issue and has arrived at the conclusion, supported by the Council and Member States, that it should maintain its original proposal. The priority today is to finalise the procedure for the entry into force of the new International Tropical Timber Agreement in 2009.
Rather than repeat the legal arguments underpinning this decision, I think that it would be more useful to address the other issues raised in your report and to answer the related oral question from Mr Markov.
I would just like to say that there is no formal link between the International Tropical Timber Agreement and other agreements such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) bilateral agreements. In fact, these agreements are very different in terms of their signatories, content, scope and organisation. The interaction between these different agreements is based on the extent to which the developments achieved as part of this process fuel the debates and initiatives that are taking place elsewhere, as well as the ability of the various processes to generate synergy. Within the framework of all of these agreements, the European Union is pursuing its main objective of capitalising on the enormous contribution that trade can make to sustainable development: for example by ensuring support for multilateral agreements and national legislation on the environment.
The Commission is of course ready to report to the Council and Parliament on the activities of the ITTO, but I would still like to draw your attention to the fact that this organisation publishes its own annual reports. Therefore, we can consult these, and the Commission is prepared, if necessary, to provide additional information. As for the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT), the Council regulation already stipulates that the Commission must present an annual report on the functioning of the licence system.
This is all the information I can give you. Since Commissioner Michel is away and could not be with us this evening, despite members of his staff being here, I am personally authorised to forward any comments and observations resulting from this interesting debate to him, at a time when we are pondering the development of a number of countries, particularly African countries.
Therefore, I would like to offer my sincere thanks to the House and to Mrs Lucas and Mr Markov for all their hard work. I will now listen carefully to the comments from the various speakers."@en1
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