Brussels, 23/05/2007 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday, with adoption of the report by Daniel Caspary (EPP-ED, Germany) entitled “Global Europe - external aspects of competitiveness”, the European Parliament gave its formal support to the strategy suggested last October (“Global Europe”, EUROPE 9278 and 9279) by Peter Mandelson to serve as a guideline for the new Union trade policy.
First and foremost, the EP supports the general principle defended by the trade commissioner. In response to Mr Mandelson, who takes the view that Global Europe is a strategy that calls for the rejection of protectionism in Europe and activism on external markets, the EP states in its resolution that it: “believes that the benefits of an open trading system outweigh its potentially disruptive impact; considers, therefore, that the EU should continue to strive to complete the single market, continue to promote increased global liberalisation and free and fair trade and resist protectionism”. The EP resolution considers that the “benefits of liberalisation accrue largely to those countries that lift tariff and NTBs and open their markets; considers, therefore, that the ability of the EU to increase its competitiveness is dependent, among other factors, upon it addressing barriers to trade at a global level, (…) opening its markets to third countries”, and approves the Commission's strategy that “positively influences the process of globalisation”.
As the Union is already one of the most open economies in the world, and its performances compared to developed and emerging economies are compromised not only by a lack of reciprocity at the level of market access conditions, but also by insufficient respect of trade rules and by the proliferation of unfair trade practices, the EP therefore considers that the dismantling or the reduction of high customs duties and non-tariff barriers for Community exports must, by taking into account the considerations relating to development, constitute one of the main priorities of the Union's trade policy. As this objective is at the heart of Mr Mandelson's approach, the EP therefore approves all the pillars of its strategies, with a view reservations here and there: - conclusion of the multilateral negotiations of the Doha Round; - the negotiation of bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) with emergent countries or areas, even if they are only a “sub-optimal solution”, to ensure broad liberalisation of services and reintroducing other Singapore subjects excluded in 2003 from the Doha talks (investment, public markets and competition/State aid); - fresh impetus for transatlantic relations; - modern strategy for balancing trade relations with China; - market access strategy for European exporters. It should be noted on this point that the EP also devotes a large chapter to public procurement, for which it considers that the Commission should work in favour of mutual access compared to the developed and emergent countries, in the context of renegotiating PAA/AMP (public procurement agreement) at the WTO. Also, it invites the Commission and Council to insist on including a clause in the renegotiated PAA allowing the Union to give preference to SMEs when attributing public contracts after the model used in the United States and Japan; - and a strategy for better compliance with intellectual property rights.
The EP mainly calls for social standards (set out in the ILO fundamental conventions) and environmental norms to be included in multilateral and bilateral trade talks to combat dumping. It therefore calls on the Commission to clarify the way it conceives this kind of standard in trade policy, to define the content of the social and environmental chapters envisaged in the new EFAs and to develop a strategy to encourage Union partners to accept these chapters. In regulatory matters, the EP calls for greater consistency between the Union rules and practice and those of its main trading partners while stressing that this must not result in downward harmonisation of standards and regulations. On services, although it is in favour of gradual and mutual liberalisation in trade talks, the EP considers that the field of public services should remain outside the negotiations. Also, it considers it necessary to distinguish commercial services from public services and insists on the need to maintain the latter (health, education, drinking water, energy and culture) outside all negotiation. The EP, moreover, takes the view that raw material (mainly energy resources) deserve special treatment in the new EU trade policy and that, with climate change, access to energy and to resources and their use must be governed by multilateral rules that must not be undermined by EFAs competing with each other to obtain the most favourable access conditions.
In a chapter devoted to Trade Defence Instruments (TDIs), the EP warns against the risk of unilaterally depriving the Union of defence means in the face of the proliferation of unfair trade practices and intensive and often abusive use by third countries of TDIs against EU imports. It believes that there is “no visible or urgent need to revise or modify the current Community TDIs'. Finally, in a chapter on exchange rates, the EP invites the Commission to make concrete proposals on measures to be taken when evolution of the exchange rate could be harmful to the Union's competitiveness, and to envisage the adoption of measures of this kind during revision of TDIs.