Democratic Deficit and WTO
04 April 2006
During a debate on the ongoing WTO negotiations, which began in November 2001 and through rounds in Seattle, Cancun and Hong Kong, have laboured much but delivered little, Ulster MEP Jim Allister focused on the EU's unreciprocated offer on agricultural export subsidies and the inherent democratic deficit in the Brussels Commission's role representing all of Europe.
In the course of his remarks, Mr Allister said:-
"Mr President, although the current round of multilateral trade negotiations has been going on since 2001, the ambition to conclude them this year looks increasingly unobtainable, certainly if we judge it by the incremental effect of Hong Kong. Hong Kong failed to make any substantial headway on the liberalisation of the international trade in services or non-agricultural market access. The EU got nothing that matters in return for its commitment to eliminate export subsidies by 2013.
This concession, which comes on top of the pain of CAP reform, involves sacrifice for Europe’s rural communities. For example, in Northern Ireland our milk production industry is heavily reliant on export refunds available on whole-milk powder. This concession should be taken off the table in a short period of time if there is no reciprocal response on non-agricultural market access and on services.
My second area of concern is the lack of real democratic control over what is negotiated on our behalf by the Commission. As one of the terms of EU membership, each state surrenders control of trade policy to Brussels so that no Member State can independently negotiate trade agreements with any country anywhere in the world. National interests are made totally subservient to what is perceived to be the EU’s overall interest. That involves a massive surrender of national power, compounded in its folly by the lack of real control over what the Commission then does in our name. Yes, we debate it here, but realistically we can change nothing. There is no effective mechanism to hold Commissioner Mandelson to account. Such democratic deficit is one of the design defects of this EU."
