Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-10-08-Speech-3-207"

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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, what is at stake now within the framework of these WTO negotiations? I do not think that it should be the lot, as noble as these people are, of Mr Mandelson or Baroness Ashton. I am not even sure that the most important thing is the issue of industrial tariffs, agricultural tariffs and market access. Clearly, we all want the agreement to be solid, to be fair for Europe, but I think that there are two main issues here. The first is the preservation of a multilateral framework for trade. We can see how much the absence of this framework in another area of globalisation – the financial markets – costs in terms of the risk to the economy, to citizens and to our society. This is what is at stake, because if these six years of negotiations result in failure, we know what sort of bilateral agreements will gradually replace them within the WTO. This is a flawed framework. We want to reform the WTO – we said so in our draft resolution – we also want to have other trade-related dimensions to be taken into account, particularly environmental dimensions, to deal with the impact on climate change and social rules. This is absolutely fundamental. However, it is not by dissolving the multilateral framework, but by strengthening it, that we will succeed in better organising this aspect of globalisation. The second issue – which I will not go into because it was covered by my colleague Mr Arif – is the rebalancing of rules that were set during the Uruguay Round, during the creation of the WTO, to reflect differences in terms of development, the situation of the least developed countries, the situation of developing countries. You also mentioned this, Commissioner, with the request for an everything but arms’ style initiative, with a safeguard clause for sensitive products. In this regard, we need to introduce rules – not necessarily free-trade rules – that look at each situation. We want fair trade, provided that it is not just about the law of the jungle. These, I believe, are the two main issues on which European negotiators must focus. It is only natural that they should be concentrating on other measures, such as agriculture, services – although not by questioning the right of developing countries to regulate public services – and industrial tariffs, but not at the expense of a successful outcome to this development round."@en1
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