Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Group of the European People’s Party backs all Commissioner Lamy's efforts to achieve a good result at Cancun, and we are obviously in total agreement with him that we need to get the text approved that has now been drafted in the Convention in the area of trade policy and also in the IGC, so you can rely on that. A successful outcome for the Doha Development Round remains a key factor in promoting worldwide economic growth, in order to strengthen multilateralism and Global Governance. The Group of the European People’s Party supports the general approach with regard to the negotiations as laid down in the Council's mandate for the third ministerial WTO Conference in Seattle. We would like to urge all WTO members to take the necessary enhancing decisions in Cancun in order to bring the Single Undertaking, the topics of that Round, to a successful close within the agreed deadlines. The political will displayed by the Member States during the ministerial OECD meeting at the end of April and the G8 summit in Evian is said to be crucial when it comes to making a success of the conference in Cancun and the trade round. What is important now is that we want to see action rather than words, and that the right negotiating climate should be created. Over the past three months, we have not seen a great deal of progress in the WTO negotiations. Many target dates for dealing with specific topics have not been met and are thus, unfortunately, on the agenda in Cancun, which is, in consequence, already threatening to become overloaded. Needless to say, we welcome in this framework the agreement that the European Union reached in the Council last week concerning the reforms of its agricultural policy, a result on which we would particularly congratulate Commissioner Fischler. We have good reason for endorsing what the Commissioner has said. We now hope that the United States, in particular, will follow the EU in taking similar steps. We should, however, note the fact that this is a fundamental breakthrough. Important items on the agenda in Cancun also include, in our view, the so-called Singapore topics – investments, competition, trade procedures, transparency of public contracts – and we would call on the Commissioner to be very much involved in these topics. The Group of the European People’s Party also requests the formal opening of negotiations in the area of competition policy. We would emphasise the potential benefits of binding basic principles in the area of competition policy, such as transparency, non-discrimination, procedural honesty and international cooperation between competing authorities. In the area of public contracts, the Group of the European People’s Party is in favour of a multilateral and legally binding agreement on public contracts, including goods and services contracts. Needless to say, we totally agree that education, public health and the audiovisual sector are sectors that have to be treated separately, and we would like to keep it that way. The European Union has always been one of the advocates of this WTO Round and as the world's largest trade bloc, it owes it to itself to continue to work hard and make Cancun a runaway success.

Political group: PPE-DE