Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-23-Speech-1-087"

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"en.20090323.14.1-087"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I am from Martinique and have always lived in the Caribbean. Believe me, Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Economic Partnership Agreement between the Caribbean Forum of African, Caribbean and Pacific States and the European Union is a matter of great concern to me. Martinique, Guadeloupe and Guyana are outermost European regions and therefore the Caribbean as a whole has not been taken into account. In my opinion, this agreement has been negotiated mainly for the purposes of trade, and the Millennium Development Goals have been relegated to second place, once again. The challenge for the Caribbean countries, therefore, will be to make up the losses in customs revenue by increasing the volume of trade with the European Union. At this time of global recession, that may not be easy. Facts are facts and these agreements have been negotiated primarily by the Directorate-General for Trade and within this Parliament the Committee on Development seems to me to have been somewhat sidelined. In this agreement, the stated objectives in relation to development and integration at regional level are not in accordance with the measures deployed to achieve them. These measures relate, for the most part, only to trade and competitiveness. As for regional integration, there too, there is a mismatch between the intended goals and the resources used. I come now more specifically to the regional integration of the outermost regions (ORs) of the Caribbean in their environment. The ORs are at the heart of a ‘living basin’. Guyana even has one of its main borders with Suriname. The ORs have more than 35 million inhabitants spread over 40 countries and cover more than two million square kilometres. That is a huge potential market. This agreement was an opportunity to reduce the impact of certain so-called structural handicaps, such as remoteness, for example, in favour of the closeness between our islands. Why have we dispensed with negotiating a specific interregional market between the outermost regions of the European Union and Cariforum? At a time when the European Commission is concerned about addressing the underdevelopment of the Caribbean countries and establishing EPAs with this group for the purpose of opening up markets and regional integration, the outermost region of the Caribbean is taken into account only to become a part of the Cariforum open market and it remains stuck in the same market principles as were negotiated for the whole of the European Union. These principles can put us at a disadvantage. This was a chance to promote a dialogue between cultures, the forming of cooperation, exchange of services and bringing the outermost regions..."@en1
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