A thought for Pascal Lamy. It's a trip to the "dark city" of Johannesburg that produced the spark that incited Pascal Lamy to act with vigour, passion and effectiveness so that the large multinationals in the pharmaceutical sector agree to deliver medicines to poor countries against AIDS on very special conditions. He relates this in his first book (see this section of 12 April). Maybe a trip to one of the world's most disinherited countries could convince him that unlimited opening of the European market to their farm produce is not the right way to go to help them. These countries are threatened by famine and absolutely need to rebuild, with patience and our assistance, a subsistence farming that would enable them gradually to escape permanent food dependence and rebuild a viable society, as previously existed in their civilisations. Totally free access to the European agricultural market runs in the opposite direction. The multinationals of the food sector and the broad international trade, with at times complicity with large landowners and local dignitaries, would lead small farmers to alter their crops, or else chase them from their land, so as to bring in single crop for exports, suppressing any prospect of future self-sufficiency in food and destroying the local genetic heritage. It would not be a general rule in all poor countries or for all products: but the mechanism is known.
The case of rice. Let's take the case of rice. Here is the Commissioner's argument: "the fear of an invasion of our market by rice exports from poor countries was disproportionate. The poor countries concerned produce less than they consume and their low exports only account for 0.02% of all European rice imports. It would take several years for these exports, attracted by higher European prices, to represent a significant amount". I draw two conclusions from this. The first is that the countries in question need their rice, it is already inadequate, but the attraction of the European market will lead them to export; they will have a little more money, which however, will not go to the small farmers but to commerce and multinationals, at sometimes local politicians. These countries' food dependency will become even more acute if their rice is exported. Second conclusion: in a few years the volume of their exports will become significant; yet, as Moliere said, "time will not alter the case", in these matters one has to situate oneself in time. A few years, that's tomorrow.
Pascal Lamy has not ignored the thesis by which in farming unrestricted free access to the European market would not be in the interest of poor countries "in the sense that it would encourage them to direct their agriculture towards exports and not satisfy their own domestic needs". He cites that, but discards it as "it is precisely the type of criticism levelled within the WTO at the mechanisms of the CAP encouraging the export of European farm produce". "In my opinion it's false reasoning; we should, on the contrary, conclude that the EU must itself cease subsidising its exports to developing countries of products that compete with local production. It has happened that the Union has financed ambitious breeding projects in an African country and at the same time subsidised exports of its surplus meat to the same country, to the detriment of local production. That's the type of practice to abolish.
And how to control that all free access products indeed originate from the leased advanced countries? Pascal Lamy obviously stresses that market opening must "benefit those to whom it is intended, and not little clever clogs that would have their goods transit by these countries then to export them to the EU", but experience advises caution.
Free-trade for all threatens the poorest. The EU has promised free-trade to all Mediterranean countries, Brazil, Argentina, other South American countries. The outcome will be the abolition of preferences for the poorest; at the end of the exercise, everyone (or almost) will benefit from free access to the European market. But without preferences, the poorest countries will be marginalised. The ACP States are, moreover, beginning to become seriously concerned; they know, for example, that the day the EU will have totally opened up its banana and sugar markets, they will no longer export a single kilo.
It has also to be remembered the devastating effect that uncontrolled opening of the EU market would have on European agriculture, the environment, territorial balance, the countryside and the traditions of our old continent. But I've already spoken of this on many occasions (the last time in the section of 22 March). The conclusion remains the same: in the farming sector, it's the very principle of free trade that is inappropriate. The EU's duty towards poor countries are incommensurable, and the "all but weapons" principle is positive, but with corrections.
(F.R.)