Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-17-Speech-3-072"
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"en.19991117.3.3-072"2
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"Mr President, in his introduction Mr Schwaiger says that the goal of the World Trade Organisation is free trade. But trade is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. That end must be sustainable development. So even if the volume of world trade has increased 17-fold, what use is that unless it benefits poor people and promotes sustainable development?
The uncomfortable truth is that there are losers as well as winners from international trade. Many of the losers are poor people who find their land taken away from them by large commercial firms or their livelihoods destroyed by new and often unfair competition from cheaper imports.
That is why our Group believes that before we rush headlong into yet more trade rounds in Seattle we first need a comprehensive impact assessment of the social and environmental effects of the liberalisation that has already taken place as a result of the last Uruguay Round of trade negotiations.
We also need much bolder action to ensure poor people genuinely benefit from world trade. Frankly, that is where this report is still inadequate. We need tariff-free access for least-developed countries, not only for virtually all products – that is a phrase that leaves a giant loophole for the EU to continue protecting its own agriculture – but for all products from those countries. We need an end to the hugely damaging dumping of subsidised agricultural exports on developing country markets. We need industrialised countries to make legally binding their commitments to give special and differential treatment to poorer countries. But, above all, when we see evidence that world trade rules are destroying poor people’s livelihoods or damaging the environment we need to change the rules.
Let me say very clearly that free trade is not the same as fair trade. Nothing demonstrates that more clearly than the case of the Caribbean banana farmers, some of the most vulnerable producers in the world, whose access to the EU markets has now been ruled against WTO rules, as a result of which they face a devastation of their livelihoods. So, I repeat, if world trade rules are destroying people’s livelihoods and damaging the environment or animal welfare we need to change the rules."@en1
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