SPEECH/02/299
Pascal Lamy
EU Trade Commissioner
Trade, Global Governance, Sustainable
Development
European Commission Policy Seminar
Brussels, 24-25 June 2002
I want to begin by expressing my gratitude to all those who have travelled to
Brussels from around the world to take part in this discussion.
In the spirit of outreach to all these with a stake in trade policy, the world beyond
Europe’s borders is represented not only by government ministers and officials but
also by academics, business people and NGOs. We have the same balance on the
European side.
This form of dialogue between government and civil society has become a common
feature of trade policy making here in Brussels: I hope it can also be a useful tool to
illuminate the topics on the agenda today and tomorrow.
The agenda is a valiant attempt to extract your wisdom on a wide range of issues in
a short span of time.
It is inevitable, if we want to create coherence across traditionally separate areas of
policy, that we pool our ignorance of some things and learn to listen to the
unfamiliar languages of those who are expert in fields beyond our own experience.
Given the quality of the response to our invitation, I am confident that we will end
tomorrow with new ideas and some concrete proposals as to what Europe, and
perhaps partners should be doing in the months ahead.
TRADE, GOVERNANCE, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Here in Europe, I have been involved in the last 12 months, together with other
colleagues from across the Commission, in some new thinking on all three of the
issues that form the background to this debate: trade, governance and sustainable
development.
On trade, the run-up to Doha and the subsequent push to get the negotiations
under way speak for themselves.
Despite dangers, distractions and pitfalls in steel and other sectors, we remain
committed to the multilateral route as the keystone of world trade progress. I am
encouraged by the papers being tabled in Geneva but I am concerned that we
seem to be still at a stage of staking out positions, rather than engaging in
negotiations paper. I do regret the tactical delays already being pursued by some
partners, particularly on market access talks: but this cannot endure. The bigger
challenge will be to advance before next year’s ministerial in Mexico on outstanding
business from Doha, which to my mind still means above all on access to
medicines.
On governance, the Commission launched last summer a new set of proposals to
improve governance both within the EU and globally. We are asking your help in
particular on the global side of that puzzle.
Finally, on sustainable development, as our South Africans friends know all too
well, the deadline of Johannesburg is approaching.
We have been thinking here in Brussels, as elsewhere, how to ensure that, after
Doha and Monterrey, Johannesburg too can mark a step forward. Without this, the
benefits of Doha and Monterrey will not disappear, but let us be frank: trade alone
cannot drive towards poverty alleviation in countries that have not also at home
taken grip of their own responsibilities for steering society towards greater equality,
whether among the sexes or among the richer and the poorer.
If those are the three background issues, we have tried to focus the three working
groups more narrowly: on ways to develop more open policy-making; on soft law
tools to complement hard law, and on the scope for improving the
intergovernmental structures for global cooperation.
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Let me say a word about our own experience in the search for what the governance
White Paper calls an ‘open and participative’ approach to policy making.
In principle, I guess we all would agree on the need for the Commission and other
European policy-makers to work beyond their normal spheres of influence, to
extend the dialogue to other stakeholders, not only here in Europe, but to those
from around the world with a stake in the process.
In practice, at least in my own current field, this is quite a challenge, perhaps not for
all of us, but certainly for some European trade policy officials.
It is also a challenge, let us be frank, for non-governmental organisations and for
business. These groups may be accustomed both to lobbying governments
privately and to conducting rather snappy publicity campaigns for what they want.
But they are not always comfortable to speak out publicly for what they desire in
fora where others can then bring to bear other views and occasionally inconvenient
facts.
Despite these challenges on all sides, we have now entrenched a pretty open and
very inter-active trade policy dialogue here in Brussels. But the question I want to
pose for participants in this seminar is whether we can do better in extending such
dialogue worldwide, at least when one player, such as European Union, is
developing policies which will have an impact on government and non-government
players in third countries.
There are two complications to consider here.
The first is fear. Fear that third country partners will be more powerful than we are,
and will somehow also obtain a seat at the decision-making table if we offer them a
voice in the deliberations that precede decisions.
The second challenge is capacity. Even if a voice in the deliberative process is
allowed, not every partner with an interest will be able to take up that opportunity.
How can we not only create a theoretical right to dialogue but in practice ensure that
all important voices are heard?
I believe that this issue is essential not only to good policy-making within our
countries but to better policy-making between us.
The second set of issues which we have chosen to focus on is the scope for using
new tools such as benchmarking or voluntary undertakings in the field of corporate
social responsibility, as a means of complementing hard international law. This
issue has been given a boost with the recent suggestion of incoming WTO Director
General Supachai for some sort of code of conduct in trade matters for
transnational corperations. We clearly have a meeting of minds here, and I hope
that today’s and tomorrow’s discussions will equip me with some food for further
thought on how to take this forward.
Let me state a personal prejudice here:
I am distrustful of recipes that may lend apparent dignity to surreptitious attempts to
avoid law-making. I have a strong preference for clear laws and public compliance
procedures. But I recognise, particularly in the international sphere, that the hard
law approach does not always work: that is, takes too long, costs too much, creates
no real or timely improvement in the world. I recognise, too, that softer approaches
can sometimes build bridges between evolving positions in one or other country and
can certainly be effective in drawing in non-governmental stakeholders whose
contribution may be a crucial part of the solution to any problem.
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So here, I guess the challenges of the group are two-fold.
First, how to expand the toolbox beyond hard law solutions, without creating a
presumption that the more difficult hard law solutions should always be set on one
side?
Second, how to develop verification mechanisms so that soft law solutions can be
truly effective.
I am pleased that the example on which this group is invited to focus concerns
corporate social responsibility. The Commission is currently sifting responses to
its CSR green paper, and will be taking that work forward in the near future. My
hope is that we can use this European Corporate Social Responsibility exercise to
build on the good work done in the development in OECD of guidelines for
behaviour by multinational investors in host countries. I also hope that, not least in
the World Summit on Sustainable Development, we can create developing country
willingness to use the same sort of tools.
Why this view from Europe as a major outward investor? Is this a slip into
inadvertent anti-capitalism? On the contrary. I am very conscious that the behaviour
of investors is both generally scrupulous: but their behaviour is also generally
mistrusted, not least by negotiators engaged in the investment rule-making debate
in WTO or elsewhere.
I believe that Corporate Social Responsibility tools can contribute to the additional
confidence-building we need in order to provide a basis for effective rule-making in
WTO by the end of the Doha process. I do not believe that hard law can effectively
create world-wide obligations on private sector actors. Nor should we even dream of
trying that recipe. But I do believe that more widespread recourse by host
governments, as well as by rich country home-states, to the sort of benchmarks set
on a voluntary basis in the OECD guidelines could do much to clarify this debate. I
look forward to the result of those discussions.
Finally, this seminar is asked to focus on international institutional reform. Here
in Europe, a Convention is currently considering how to reform our own institutions
to make them work effectively in a Europe 4 times bigger than the original planned
by the Founding Fathers. There is less enthusiasm for this debate at global level.
My hope is that after Johannesburg, and after our Convention has put the European
house in order, we will be able to make some progress nonetheless. But while
waiting for a comprehensive reform of multilateral institutions, co-operation
between them and openness in their workings are already objectives worth pushing
for.
My prejudice here is that we are all far too timid. I regret the mutual suspicions that
have hampered any real increase in transparency in the WTO, I hope that
discussion in this group can bring some fresh thinking to bear on that problem, for
the WTO and for all the other institutions worldwide.
This is a focussed and business-like seminar, and I do not want to give a lengthy
key note speech. You all are present because you know that these apparently
narrow and complex questions have implications for bigger and broader challenges.
There are no easy answers: even a perfect outcome to the Doha Round will not in
itself alleviate poverty, improve governance world-wide, or magically ensure
sustainable development. But I guess we are here together because we all believe
that we can take individual parts of the puzzle and begin to make a practical
difference piece by piece. I look forward to hearing tomorrow afternoon which
pieces you want us to start with, and how we can all act together.
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