Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-22-Speech-2-072"
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"en.20070522.8.2-072"2
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".
Mr President, I should like to thank the rapporteur for the approach he has taken. Mr Sturdy’s approach in taking the Barbados resolution of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly as a starting point ensured that this report moved forward from a place of compromise.
Aid for trade works best when it is delivering a common set of objectives between donor and recipient.
With the Committee on International Trade and Parliament’s delegation to the Joint Parliamentary Assembly, the Commissioner has a breadth and depth of parliamentarians with the expertise and willingness to engage with him on EPAs. As the clock keeps ticking, I urge the Commissioner to work with them to find a development-oriented solution to EPAs which ultimately fits in with the needs of the ACP.
As a whole, my group was satisfied with the tone and balance of the point, which is why we have not tabled any amendments. However, we remain concerned about a key contradiction within the report and within the conduct of the negotiations themselves: on the one hand, we urge negotiators to intensify efforts to complete the negotiations before the end of this year; yet, on the other hand, we call on the Commission not to exert undue pressure on the ACP countries. Both are accurate statements, but surely there can be nothing more pressing than a ticking clock with no acceptable deal on the table and no apparently suitable alternatives coming forward.
The Commissioner is familiar with the difficulties that deadlines present. We are not only dealing with the EPAs negotiations, but in the background we have timetables for regional integration and, of course, the troubled Doha Round. The fact that we do not have a WTO agreement has made these negotiations even harder, as the ACP cannot yet predict what they will get – if anything – out of Doha.
Through all this, however, runs the thread of development. To make increased liberalisation a driver of poverty reduction and economic growth, the European Union must integrate its trade and development policies, and nowhere is that more important than with the ACP and EPAs.
The EU is being accused of putting the year deadline before development. To counter such accusations I urge the Commissioner to demonstrate the Commission’s flexibility and commitment to the ACP’s concerns by undertaking a genuine exploration of development-oriented alternatives to the EPAs and, at the very least, if we do not have a workable agreement by the deadline, according to Cotonou we must provide at least equivalent market access to the ACP on 1 January 2008.
The European Union has the resources to undertake such an exercise. Meanwhile the ACP is struggling on a financial and technical basis. We have already spent a great deal of time discussing the EU’s aid for trade this morning and the two rapporteurs worked closely to ensure that these two reports went hand in hand.
The EU’s aid for trade programme is crucial to enabling the least-developed countries in the ACP to maximise on the benefits of increased liberalisation, and the Council has already confirmed that a substantial share of the increased trade-related assistance will be devoted to the ACP countries.
The ACP will continue to require substantial development assistance to address their supply-side constraints to trade beyond the next EDF. I would like to see the Commission and the Member States work towards significantly increasing the amount of aid for trade available as demand from ACP States increases through implementation of the EPAs. We must, however, acknowledge the moral difficulties of a major donor sitting across the negotiating table from a key recipient of aid for trade.
The Commission must not manipulate the prospect of aid by linking future development assistance to concessions made by the ACP in EPAs. Aid, by its very definition, can be used as a carrot, but it must under no circumstances be used as a stick if the EPAs are not concluded before the end of the 2007 deadline."@en1
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