Brussels, 31/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - During his visit to Madrid, on the eve of the weekend, the European Commissioner Pascal Lamy, responsible for Trade, outlined his vision of "Global governance how to give meaning to globalisation".
The true raison d'etre of Europe today is, according to him, to ensure for ourselves the dimension and power to have weight in the organisation of the world (…), in the establishment of an international economic order, which takes into account its interest and values". Also the "window of opportunity" it has to do so, is within a twenty to thirty year period, feels Mr Lamy, who envisages this new order, fairer and more suitable to the world's sustainable development, as the results of "appropriate" answers to three major challenges and the attention given to four deadlines. As, if Europe is economically equal with the United States today, tomorrow, other actors in the South will have risen in power and their integration into the world economy according to the rules and institutions, which are set must thus be our constant concern, he asserts, when warning: neither enlargement nor deepening, both major parts of our international weight, must distract us from this aim, which if a crucial priority for Europe".
Mr Lamy identifies the major challenge as being: 1) North-South convergence, for which one element among others is globalisation and whose key is to be sought in the "quality of internal policies", in "the institutional ability and political will" to interact with globalisation, with a "central role" to fulfil by three bodies of global economic governance - the WTO, the international financial institutions of Bretton-Woods and the United Nations bodies responsible for multilateral standardisation (ILO, Codex Alimentarius or Kyoto Conference) and development (UNDP, etc.); 2) the environment, to the extent savings in fossil energies is a long-term imperative, but also a strategic need in a far closer timeframe, if we want to reduce the tensions between the Western economies and China and India around access to oil resources and avoid being taken hostage in the new race for oil that we could not control; 3) articulation between regionalism and multilateralism, which must go hand in hand and be warned against "relationship of strength", so as not to arrive at what Mr Lamy fears: That the world organises itself into major commercial tectonic plates, each time dominated by major industrialised countries and that these plates do not collide. From where the need for a strong North-South financial solidarity in the large scale projects of the Pan-American ALCA, which is decidedly not in the Commissioner's favour (see EUROPE of 27 July, p.7) and multilateralism, the only one according to him, to contain the danger of a trade dispute between blocks and political and strategic tensions.
Pascal Lamy also draws attention to four deadlines: a) the illustration and fascinating contrast between, on the one hand, the G7 Summit, in Genoa - where the rich country club was seen as an illegitimate power due to the gap between the claim that they entrust it with guiding the world economy and its weak ability to effectively contribute to the sustainable development of the planet - and on the other hand, the Bonn conference on the Kyoto Protocol, an assembly of 170 States, North and South, East and West mixed, which, on the obstinate initiative of the EU, lead to a modest agreement it is true, but concrete, which effectively engages the world in a process to control the greenhouse effect; b) the meeting in Doha next November, where the WTO has no other alternative than to succeed in the launching of a New Round at the risk of damaging its credibility, a little less than two years after the failure in Seattle; c) the Europe/Latin America Summit in May 2002 a meeting that takes on a new shape since the Summit of the Americas, which relaunched the planned free trade area between the NAFTA and the South of the continent, a southern hemisphere in which the Union sees partners with a "considerable" potential for development and whose "alliance is indispensable for us to build this multilateral and multipolar system that so interests Europe"; d) the Barcelona V meeting, where it seems "crucial" to "confirm and revitalise with the Mediterranean partners the collective undertakings to make the Mediterranean basin an area of shared peace and prosperity, despite the events, notably in the Middle East, which have not been very favourable.
Finally a word from Mr Lamy over the Laeken deadline, which will be a moment of truth for the EU, the head or tails side - indivisible - of integration: what model of society do we want in Europe? What institutions may ensure it? Here the Commissioner does not have a "clear" answer to these questions, if not the conviction that "for lack of a vision, a desire and a common external representations (Europe) will have not power (…) will be confined in a defensive role and excluded from a position of leadership", while to project itself in the world, (it), must assert its identity in a specific project and in legitimate and effective institutions.