Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-16-Speech-1-139"
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"en.20060116.17.1-139"2
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".
Mr President, as one of the 26 MEPs who attended the world trade talks I would agree with the Commissioner that there was some success – it was not a complete failure. But I must say from my understanding of what happened in Hong Kong that enormous pressure was exerted on the European model of agriculture at those talks, all in the name of helping developing countries.
As I said in Hong Kong and as I said in this House previously, my stance has been that this is a false impression. A false impression is being created that developing countries would benefit from more access to the EU markets. Nothing could be further from the truth, indeed the least developed countries have very little to gain from such a gesture. The real winners would be the beef barons of South America, if we were to allow the European farmers to be sold out. In the streets of Hong Kong we saw Korean farmers fighting for their livelihoods, small Korean farmers threatened by transnational grain corporations which are bargaining under the guise of endeavouring to help developing countries.
In Europe we cannot allow our food supply to be outsourced. Treating agriculture and food as ordinary products on a production line threatens our very food security. It is clear that the WTO talks cannot succeed as long as it insists on playing Russian roulette with our food supplies and with the livelihood of our small and medium farmers, because they are the ones at risk, not the agricultural exports, Commissioner. Perhaps it is time to exclude agriculture altogether from the WTO because, as you said yourself, it amounts to only 5% of world trade. Why should 5% prevent the 95% progress that could be made? This should be rethought in the interests of the overall talks, because I believe agriculture will always be a problem."@en1
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