Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Communication that the European Commission has just presented to Parliament on the modalities of the agricultural agreement to be negotiated at the forthcoming WTO Round was unanimously approved on 27 January by the General Affairs Council. I believe this proposal to be balanced and to be in line with the spirit of Article 20 of the Marrakech Agreement and of the Doha Declaration and makes a genuine and generous contribution to those who until now have gained little from almost 50 years of multilateralism in trade – in other words, the world’s poorest countries. Evidence of this is the proposal for free access to the markets of the richest countries for the agricultural products of the poorer countries. Also, the compromise proposal intended to ensure that at least 50% of rich countries’ agricultural and food imports come from the poorest countries. This proposal is coherent with current practice in the European Union which, as the Commission states in one of its recent documents, imports more food products than the United States, Japan, Australia, Canada and New Zealand put together. This is what gives us the moral authority to say that this WTO Round must be the development round. This is also why we have proposed a food security fund that will enable the poorest countries to implement measures to protect their markets from the subsidised exports of the rich countries, thereby enabling them to develop local production and to fight hunger and poverty. We must also be aware, however, of one important aspect, which is that an excessive reduction of customs tariffs could undermine preferential access to the EU market, which is already benefiting some countries with which we have trade agreements. Amongst these are the ACP countries, under the Cotonou agreements, and the countries on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. We will have to be careful about this because if we establish excessive tariff reductions and do not ensure that our market preferences in favour of these countries are consolidated, these same poor countries could lose market share to other, richer and more competitive countries. It is also because of this attitude of openness and support towards the poorest countries that gives us, the European Union, the moral authority, to say that we also have the right to protect our farmers and to preserve our social model. The European negotiators can therefore only accept a final agreement at the WTO that firstly preserves the European farming model based on farming’s contribution to rural land-use planning, to the territory’s balance and to the vitality of rural areas, which represent almost 80% of our territory. What this means, specifically, is that the EU will be able to continue to support its farmers and to guarantee a reasonable – and only a reasonable – level of Community preference for farm produce. Secondly, we must ensure the right balance between greater trade liberalisation and greater requirements in areas that are not strictly trade related, but are definitely related to the trade in food, such as, in particular, the quality and safety of food, compliance with basic environmental standards and adherence to the trademarks and denominations of origin and geographical indications of our products which, as we all know, are widely counterfeited by a huge variety of countries across the world, with the WTO rules unable to prevent this happening. Unless this is done, we shall be doing something that our society does not understand and we shall be attacking our own interests and, even worse, we shall not be supporting the interests of the poorest countries. I think that the European Union has provided a good example of good, reasonable proposals for these countries that have until now been the most marginal players, the most marginal beneficiaries of the WTO – the poor countries. We have come up with good and positive initiatives under ‘everything but arms’, and our proposal for negotiation consolidates these proposals. I therefore believe that we must call on other rich countries in the world, even more highly developed than we are, to follow the EU’s example.

Political group: PPE-DE