Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-10-08-Speech-3-212"
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"en.20081008.22.3-212"2
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"Madam President, could I first try to describe our huge disappointment after ten days of intensive negotiations in Geneva. We felt that we were so close to being able to strike a deal on agriculture and NAMA, knowing very well that at the very end this would be the single undertaking that would determine whether the European Union could consider a package to be acceptable.
As the person responsible for agriculture, I must say it was extremely encouraging that for the first time ever European agriculture was not blamed for the failure of the discussions. The reason was that we have actually been doing our homework in the agricultural sector by reforming our common agricultural policy, first with the big reform in 2003 and then all the reforms after that period. So we were able to deliver an 80% reduction in trade-distorting domestic support, without actually damaging our agricultural sector. We had the possibility here to also lock the reforms into the multilateral trading system. It was not an agreement at any cost. It was a balanced agreement within those two areas. We could justify to the Council that we were negotiating within the mandate given by the Council to the negotiators. For agriculture, this mandate was simply not to force us into a new reform within the agricultural sector.
I agree with those of you who have said that the multilateral system is important and necessary, because of the fact that it is only within the multilateral system that we can discipline, for example, trade-distorting domestic support and all other non-trade concerns. This can never be done in bilateral negotiations, so we have to stick to the values of the multilateral system.
I also have to say that in these negotiations we never targeted the market of the developing countries. Quite the opposite, actually, which was why the SSM was so important, as I said in my first intervention, in sheltering special products in the developing countries. I would like to add that we introduced the ‘everything-but-arms’ agreement back in 2002, which means that the European Union today is by far the biggest importer of agricultural commodities worldwide. We are bigger than Canada, the United States, Australia and Japan all together. So we have actually opened up our markets in the agricultural sector to these countries.
Food security has been mentioned here tonight as well. We have to realise that food security consists both of domestic internal production and of imports. If we look at the European Union’s agricultural sector, we would never be able to be as strong as we are today if we had a closed market in agriculture. We have today, if I could take the country of the Presidency, EUR 7 billion in surplus trade in agricultural commodities. If we imagine that we closed our markets, we would never be able to sell all our high-quality products internally because we would be punished if we protected ourselves. Others would do the same, which would prevent us from taking advantage of the emerging and increasingly open market opportunities for our high-quality products. So, of course we need a balanced approach.
Geographical indications (GIs) were mentioned, but I did not raise this in my first intervention because of the time pressure and the Chair’s very strong hand on time limits. GIs are a crucial issue for the European Union and we made it totally clear to the other negotiating partners that we would never be able to sign a deal if we did not have a positive outcome on geographical indications because this is so important, especially for high quality Mediterranean products.
I will reply briefly to Mrs McGuinness. I do agree with you that we have actually been under-prioritising our development aid in the agricultural sector for decades. Now that we see prices – not commodity prices, as it is right that prices have been going down today, but the prices of seeds and fertilisers – skyrocketing, we have suggested our facility to try and help the least developed countries, the poorest countries in the world, and put them in a position to buy seeds and fertilisers. This EUR 1 billion facility is now being discussed here in Parliament, and I hope that there will be a positive approach to this possibility of helping developing countries feed their own people and avoid migration from rural areas to the cities. Please keep this in mind. It is very important."@en1
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