Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-02-01-Speech-4-031"
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"en.20070201.4.4-031"2
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".
Madam President – with my warm congratulations on your election, Commissioner, the Government Procurement Agreement has hitherto applied only to the OECD states, and their expenditure on public contracts in respect of supplies, services and building works make up something between 10% and 25% of their GDP.
China has now been giving consideration to the possibility of joining them. The renewed negotiations currently in progress are, in general, aimed at extending the scope of the Agreement, and that would, of course, give it a vast amount of added significance in terms of the international exchange of goods and services.
While the Commission must certainly, in the revision process, seek to improve transparency and combat corruption in international public procurement, the urgent environmental challenges mean that ecological sustainability in the public sector must be given high priority, and that, as I understand it, means that regulation is needed to deal with it. It must, for example, be lawful and legitimate, when awarding state contracts, for preference to be given to environmentally friendly goods and services, even if they are minimally more expensive.
One crucial question is how one deals with developing countries. It needs to be ensured that public procurement, in the same way as the other Singapore issues, is dealt with absolutely independently of the current Doha development round negotiations, the need for which was expressed very clearly by the developing countries at Cancún.
The document that we are talking about – the one that is due to be renegotiated – can in fact only apply to partners of comparable strength, and so I see something problematic in the idea of non-discrimination or reciprocity, which seem to me once more to tend towards treating highly industrialised countries and developing countries in exactly the same way, which does not work.
The proposed provisions for developing countries, involving a transitional period of three years – or five for the least developed – are quite utterly inadequate when it comes to persuading them to sign up to the Agreement. I think one regrettable consequence of this is that many of these countries will give this Agreement a wide berth, which I, in principle, regard as a disgrace when this is meant to be being handled plurilaterally."@en1
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