Strasbourg, 09/09/2003 (Agence Europe) - In a resolution adopted last week in Strasbourg on the links between trade and development in LDCs, the European Parliament stipulates that trade is another development tool and must in no way substitute development aid.
Called on to express its view on the Commission communication, "How to help developing countries benefit from trade", Parliament judged, like its rapporteur, Luisa Morgantini (GUE/NGL, Italy), that the integration of developing countries into world trade had to remain a priority of the Doha Round in multilateral WTO negotiations. This is particularly important given the participation of the poorest countries in world trade had decline over the last ten years.
Parliament considers that the Union has to carry through a coherent development aid policy that demands that agricultural policy, trade and fisheries promote sustainable development and contributes effectively to the fight against poverty. It points out that the European Commission that the commitment taken at Doha to improve market access for products from LDCs have a comparative advantage, namely, labour intensive agricultural and industrial products and is calling for the speeding up of the calendar for dismantling export subsidies.
In the context of essential resources like water and land, MEPs want the Union to particularly defend at the WTO, the idea that these goods should not be subject to the logic of trade. They are calling on the European Commission to not exercise pressure for the liberalisation and deregulation without discrimination of energy markets in LDCs but instead, to highlight policies for increasing their capabilities for providing the necessary goods and services for their internal market, followed by improvements in the quality of these goods and services for being able to compete on the international markets. They are also calling on the Commission to contribute to the strengthening and diversification of the economies in LDCs and for activating the internal markets in these countries by asymmetrical trade with the Union, as well as their trade relations with neighbouring countries (trade south/south. MEPs are insisting that trade with the EU highlights fair trade and that the European Commission funds companies and associations that practice it, as well as those that promote it in the Union.
A few days away from the Fifth Ministerial Conference of the WTO in Cancun (Mexico), the European Parliament is calling on the Commission to support the demands introduced by 22 countries in April 2002 for democratising the WTO and the taking into account of the new development objectives and international commitments of the Union at the Bangkok, Monterey, Johannesburg conferences and G8 summit.