David Campbell Bannerman, on behalf of the ECR Group. – Mr President, having recently returned from an international trade mission to New Zealand, a country that is among the world’s greatest exporters, and now with no subsidies for its farmers, I reminded them of the importance of free trade and open markets through the World Trade Organization (WTO). The ECR Group is committed to the multilateral trade agenda and to a positive outcome at this biannual WTO ministerial conference this December. I will do my part working together with the world’s trade ministers to champion the central role of the WTO as a global rules-based organisation.

The WTO is quite simply the spring that flows into the rivers of trade agreements around the world, including all EU trade deals and amongst the WTO’s 164 members. We support the outstanding items of the Doha Development Agenda, but where progress is not possible, the WTO should not stay stuck but advance in areas where it can progress, for example, e-commerce, investment facilitation, and in services by seeking to unlock the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) on top of GATS. Trade liberalisation has shown huge benefits for developing countries, but trade facilitation and market opening must be accompanied by appropriate flanking measures covering, say, education, equality, infrastructure development and good governance. The work of the WTO and a commitment to multilateralism are absolutely essential to this aim.