Mr. Eamon Ryan:
It is not just non-governmental organisations to which we should listen in the debate, although they have been very good at informing it. Hundreds of thousands of people are marching throughout the world, in Seattle and Genoa, for example, and we should listen to what they say. We should not be distracted by the scenes of violence on television and on which there is a tendency to concentrate, and should listen instead to the clear message being given and about which these people are protesting peacefully.
There is a rage at the unfairness in world trade, that one third of the world can live in fantastic wealth while two thirds live in various degrading levels of crippling poverty, that the world institutions that are supposed to protect everyone, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, are part of the problem, and that the Washington consensus they espouse is part of the trading problem that brings about so much of the poverty the world is in.
I am an advocate of trade and believe in the potential of free enterprise to free people from poverty, but I only want to trade where it is equitable, sustainable and fair. What has occurred in the World Trade Organisation in recent years is not fair. It is an issue of justice and I hope the Government takes justice into account in its consideration in how behave on the WTO.
We hold ourselves up as being the just. The European Union is great at espousing that it is the one institution in the world concerned about environment, social and other issues but the reality is that our Government and institutions which represent us at EU level are not on the side of the just when it comes to the WTO trade negotiations.
We are like the conquistadores who went before us, who sailed from Europe under a cross and marched behind one and were blind to the devastation they left behind them. We are equally blind to the devastation that our trade policies, the policies we insist upon and enforce, create. We are blind to the fact that the free trade system is our new faith, it is the new cross. It is now our faith that economic growth and market liberalisation solve our problems. That is the new cross which so many western governments, particularly our own, march behind.
We are blind to the fact that this faith denies the need for labour and social rights to go hand in hand with the free trade rights we insist on imposing. We met a young trade union representative from the textile industry in Bangladesh and asked why the labour rights they have could not be enforced. She told us the ILO had no teeth and none of the powers that the employers have in their trade negotiations.
In terms of environmental rights, the blind faith we have in free trade includes any need for environmental rights. No less a person than the deputy head of the WTO, Roderick Abbot, in Dublin recently at a presentation to IBEC, made the point that the multilateral environmental agreements in reality had very little effect and were of no major consequence in terms of the WTO negotiations. Environmental sustainable rights are not equal to the economic rights certain countries demand.
If we are to see the Doha round of talks as the development round, how can this Government go to Cancun as part of the EU delegation and insist that services such as postal, news agency services, and all the other services that are a common part of the civil society in a state, must be opened up when the WTO negotiators have failed to deliver the provisions required by Doha in terms of access to health services and special and deferential treatment? How can this Government pursue, along with the European Union, an insistence that we broaden the world trade negotiations in those areas when we have not even achieved access to health services as a basic right for those developing countries under the Doha round of negotiations?
The key issue for the EU and for this Government is the policy we push in Cancun. In talking to the Ministers and looking at official reports, there is no doubt that we are very much on the side of further liberalisation. We are pushing that more than anything else when comes to the trade negotiations.
This debate is flawed because it is very difficult in five minutes to make the range of arguments, but the Government should listen and start to take issues of justice into account and not just those of free trade. It should go to Cancun and get away from mouthing the same liberalisation agenda that the to which the T?naiste is dedicated. There is a comment in the briefing paper that there is a concern that if we do not introduce these new issues, we will take our foot off the pedal of the expansion of roles for the WTO. There are concerns we will have a two tier WTO and there might be different rules for different countries. That is exactly what we need because we have a two tier world. One tier has extreme wealth and military power and the other has no capital or military power. As part of that wealthy, militarised part of the world, we cannot impose our will on the other two thirds of the world and not take account of their needs. Their needs are different and should be respected in the WTO negotiations. If we hear that the EU is pushing for further liberalisation of services, the Government and its Ministers will be responsible.
