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Contributions from
the Column
Facts and trends
As Cancún approaches: Bundestag debate and new NGO campaign
Ahead of the Cancún world trade talks: lots of issues still unsettled
BMZ budget 2004
Basic education
GTZ's annual report: income growth
India plans
Interview with Jürgen Wilhelm:
40 years of DED: "Our work will become more political"
KfW annual report: lending commitments reduced
Lesotho: Lahmeyer found guilty of corruption
Cooperation with Namibia
8-9/2003
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As Cancún approaches:
Bundestag debate and new NGO campaign
On July 3, coalition votes carried a motion tabled in the Bundestag by the SPD and the Greens for a "comprehensive development-oriented round of global trade talks to ensure fair and sustainable trade" (Bundestag printed paper 15/1317). Among other things, it calls upon the Federal Government to work to gear further liberalisation of world trade to the principle of sustainable development and enable globalisation to be shaped along acceptable social and ecological lines. The motion favours making significant concessions to the developing countries at the WTO ministerial conference in Cancún – guaranteeing them better market access, for example, granting them transition periods for liberalisation and exemptions to protect their agriculture ("Development Box") and sharply reducing export subsidies in the rich countries. The motion also calls for more cooperation between WTO and other international organisations so that policy areas such as environmental protection and social policy carry more weight in the international trade system.
In the preceding Bundestag debate, CDU/CSU MP Michael Fuchs accused the coalition groups of tabling a motion seeking to "shackle the WTO with every conceivable field of policy". "We need a World Trade Organization and not a World Social Organization", Fuchs said. Social Democrat MP Sascha Raabe retorted that it was not a question of doling out charity but overcoming injustice in the world trade system and "granting developing countries the same right that we, the industrialised nations, have enjoyed for decades".
The ruling coalition's motion was welcomed by NGO representatives such as Reinhard Hermle, chairman of the Association of German Develoment NGOs (VENRO). Klaus Piepel, spokesman for the new global trade campaign 'Gerechtigkeit jetzt!' (Justice now!), described it as "a good basis for critically monitoring Germany's global trade policy in the interest of more justice for the poor". On the day of the Bundestag debate, representatives of the new campaign, which is sponsored by a number of church- and non-church-based NGOs, demonstrated outside the Berlin Reichstag for a fairer system of global trade. (ell)
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