Mr President, Commissioner, we have listened closely to your intervention on the Seattle Conference and we appreciate your adherence to the debate, to the commitments that you made here, specifically in the November part-session in which this issue was discussed. It is nevertheless true that, as you yourself pointed out, no agreement was reached in Seattle, and the problems remain. They remain, and for us Socialists, the failure is not just that no agreement was reached. The failure can be seen in the fact that following the Uruguay Round, the volume of trade in the context of this agreement has increased but unfortunately, so has the gap between developed and developing countries. For those who see trade as an instrument for making society more harmonious and prosperous, as we Socialists do, this situation can only be of grave concern. This is why our points of view are still valid in relation to the content, the strategy and the nature of the agreement. It is worth stating once again that where the content is concerned, we are still fighting for environmental issues, for consumer protection, for social and human rights, for cultural diversity and for the multifunctional role of agriculture. This is not with a view to indulging in a pretty protectionist strategy where the markets are concerned, but with a view to guaranteeing the kind of global society that we can now glimpse. In terms of strategy, we would like to see the Council, the Commission and the European Parliament combine their efforts and unite in the same direction. I also think it important, as your words imply, that we should not be totally dependent on the United States and that we are able to find new partnerships, not only in terms of trade with other regional blocs and with other world trading powers. Thirdly, in relation to the nature of the agreement: it is true that we all wanted an agreement, but failure to reach one is better than an agreement which will have an unsatisfactory outcome. This is why we are once again arguing for an overall agreement and not sectoral agreements, which is what the United States is once again seeking. We feel that the market is not a solution to all problems but neither is it the source of all evil. The market is essential to wealth creation and it is with this in mind that we want to argue for five more points here: firstly, a new agenda for Geneva that is not just the “leftovers” from Marrakech; secondly, to uphold the European Union’s common strategy of seeking out numerous new partnerships; thirdly, greater transparency and more legitimacy in the decisions, which is why we support the proposal for a Parliamentary body which would monitor the democratic nature of proceedings; fourthly, that the European institutions understand why non-governmental organisations should be present in Seattle and specifically that the European Parliament should be able to find fora for discussion, debate and ideas so that we can be spokespeople for this civil community whose concerns are exactly the same as ours. And finally, Mr President, I would like to end by saying that we support institutional reform that enables developing countries to be given greater consideration in the WTO’s decision-making process.

Political group: PSE