Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-01-19-Speech-2-181"
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"en.20100119.8.2-181"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, since the entry into force of the Cotonou agreements, poverty has not subsided. We have therefore failed in our development mission. Something has to change with this second revision.
I am pleased to say that there is a fairly broad consensus on the measures that I am proposing, and I think that one of the measures that we can use to eradicate poverty is to really combat tax havens, and to use this instrument to do what we can. Within the European Union and in the ACP region, we can force multinationals to declare, on a country-by-country basis, how much they earn and how much tax they pay.
That is also an international demand. However, many years will go by before this demand is met at international level. So let us use the opportunities that we have within this agreement to establish this rule in Europe. This is why I am asking you to reject the proposed amendment to paragraph 16, but to preserve the initial wording, which calls on us to put our own house in order.
In the same vein, what we can do is also force our own investment bank to take action with regard to tax havens. We should prohibit European Development Fund investments in companies that do not make profits in the countries in which they operate, but prefer to make profits in tax havens.
This was the case in Zambia, where very substantial investments – to the tune of USD 46 million, I believe – were made in the Mopani mine, for example. This has done nothing to improve the lives of Zambians; rather, it has improved the lives of the shareholders who have benefited from this aid. It is therefore totally counterproductive. This is within our power. We can change the mandate of our bank. Let us therefore do what we can and put nothing off until tomorrow. Let us take action in this regard.
Then, there are principles to which we should remain totally committed: human rights and migrant rights, and I urge you to retain my proposed wording of Article 31 and not quell the protests against bilateral agreements which, in reality, constitute an outsourcing of migratory flows."@en1
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