Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-05-11-Speech-3-284"
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"en.20050511.21.3-284"2
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"Mr President, I thank Mr Moreno Sánchez for his work on this issue, but I think it will come as no surprise to him that, unfortunately, our Group cannot support his report as it stands. While there are some good parts, highlighting the aims of sustainable development and poverty eradication, these are sadly undermined by the overall direction of the report, which is an uncritical endorsement of deregulated free trade as the principal means of achieving those goals.
The assumption still seems to be that more trade automatically equals more growth, which automatically equals more poverty reduction, yet the reality on the ground is quite different and, as the recent UNDP Least Developed Countries report makes clear, greater integration of some of the poorest countries into the international trading system has generally not led to poverty reduction amongst the poorest people.
Another assumption underpinning the report is that, if only the WTO’s critics understood the institution more, then somehow we would mysteriously fall in love with it, or, as the report puts it, ‘the WTO must provide adequate information and explanations to civil society [...] in order to avoid the process of globalisation and the role played by the WTO being widely misunderstood and misrepresented’. Quite frankly, this is unhelpful and patronising nonsense. Increasingly, large sections of civil society know exactly what the WTO is about, and they know precisely how damaging the process of economic globalisation can be. What we need is not a cosmetic public relations exercise but a fundamental, thoroughgoing reform of the institutions and the rules of world trade so that sustainability and equity are genuinely put at their heart.
Now to some of the detail: our Group has retabled its original amendment on commodity prices. Falling commodity prices is one of the single greatest reasons why poorer countries do not get a fairer deal out of world trade. As many as 43 developing countries depend on a single commodity for more than 20% of their total export revenues. If prices for the 10 most important agricultural commodities exported by developing countries had risen in line with inflation since 1980, those exporters would have received around USD 112 billion more in 2002 than they actually did, which would have been twice the level of official development assistance. Frankly, I find it extraordinary that the Committee on International Trade, which prides itself on saying that trade should support poverty eradication, could have rejected an amendment which sought action on stabilising commodity prices. I hope that the plenary will support us on that tomorrow.
We have also tabled an amendment on the Commission mandate. It is hard to imagine what justification the Commission can possibly have for working on a mandate that is six years old and which, therefore, fails to reflect any of the important changes that have happened since it was agreed. Perhaps Mr Mandelson could tell us what that justification is because, from an institutional perspective, we cannot pretend that, after two out of the last three ministerials ended in collapse, we are dealing with business as usual. We cannot ignore the resistance of many countries in the south to embark on more and more new competences for the WTO.
Now that a new Commission is in office and as the new WTO Ministerial approaches, we should give a sign to the international community that Europe reflects these changes and is able to learn from the mistakes made in both Seattle and Cancún."@en1
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