Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-04-Speech-4-166"
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"en.20030904.5.4-166"2
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Access to water is essential for life, health, food, well-being and development. Water should not therefore be considered simply as a good, but as a public asset. It is particularly shocking that 1.7 million people have no access to drinking water, causing 30 000 deaths per day through related diseases.
While the shortage of drinking water in developing countries has worsened, however, the privatisation of water utilities continues apace, particularly as a result of the conditions for receiving loans imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and structural adjustment programmes which weaken public services and induce under-investment in this sector.
The liberalisation or privatisation of water utilities has helped deprive poor communities of access to water and has driven prices up. A serious assessment of the socio-economic and environmental effects of liberalisation is therefore needed, as are guarantees that Articles VI and XXI of the General Agreement on Trade in Services will be revised, in order to protect the right of each developing country to decide freely on its method of water supply.
The establishment of a European Water Fund is a good initiative in principle, as long as it supports the water policy of the beneficiary countries by ensuring public ownership and management so that, as a result, everyone will have access to water, without discrimination."@en1
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