There are 70,000 European companies that
export goods and services to Canada. More
than 50,000 of those are SMEs, small
and medium enterprises, and they employ
all together, directly and indirectly
through their suppliers, more than
850,000 people. Of course these are all
what we call normal Europeans, they have
families, they have careers. They depend
already on exports to Canada. By removing
many of the hurdles - some of them really
silly, irrational - for exports
and generally for economic activities
between Europe and Canada, more companies,
more jobs, more destinies will be
improved very likely. There's no
absolute guarantee that a trade agreement
would lead to some economic miracle. CETA
would definitely not lead to an economic
miracle. It's not the solution to all the
problems, but it will definitely help the
economy of Europe and the economy of
Canada: have better choice, better
opportunity, more jobs, more growth, again
without being a miraculous cure for all of our
ills. CETA is not touching in any way,
directly or indirectly, our laws, our
standard. Everything that we have made as
social choices and is enshrined in
law in Europe stays intact.
There used to be fears that
what we call the ISDS, the investors-state
dispute settlement system, in
CETA would allow companies
to sue governments over legislation and
would be able to induce a
regulatory shield. We have replaced and it
was really the determined
action of the S&D Group, we have
replaced the system with a system which
is really close to the courts of
our member states or to the
International Court of Justice or the
European Court of Justice, which really
guarantees with public judges, with
transparency, with a court of appeal, that
public interest is really sacrosanct
throughout the process, including in
terms of
investors-state dispute settlement. I do believe
that there's no risk whatsoever of a
flood of the GMO crops or of any
other type of product being sold to the
European market, which does not fully but
fully respect our standards.
What I would say to the Prime Minister of Canada is
on top of, of course, welcome to Strasbourg,
to the seat of the European Parliament,
which is the seat of a very vibrant
democracy, we had a lot of pluralism and
debate and contradiction and dissent on
CETA itself, but that dissent,
particularly in our own group, was
very intellectually rich and
constructive, that dissent was the fuel
for the improvements, the changes that we
together - the European Parliament, the
Commission and the Trudeau government - have
brought to CETA, really making it a truly
progressive agreement. If we had not
this dissent, this contradiction, these
debates within our own group and within
Parliament, I'm sure CETA would not
be what it is today and it probably not
be votable or adoptable. I mean it
would not qualify politically and
morally and economically for a vote in
the European Parliament. We have just
voted on it. I believe this success is
due to the changes that we have made
together and this would not have been
possible without the beauty of the
pluralism of this house to which Trudeau is
very welcome.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét