Text tabled : A6-0409/2007

  Glyn Ford (PSE), in writing. − Mr Lipietz’s report deals with an important issue. If we are serious about trying to control the production of ‘greenhouse’ gases we must ensure that these costs are factored in on each and every occasion. Trade – free trade – is an important motor for the global economy and it is something we must support. Nevertheless, we cannot continue in the long term to ship goods thousands of kilometres around the globe, with virtually identical goods travelling in the opposite direction, without ensuring the full costs are covered. Yet this transition will need to be carefully managed if some of the poorest people in the world are not to bear the burden of the industrialised world’s profligacy in carelessly abusing the planet’s environmental resources. Europe has a responsibility to protect those people whose livelihoods have been built, at no fault to themselves, on a failing to value the long-term viability of the planet rather than short-term profit.