MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION on the upcoming EU-US summit and Transatlantic Economic Council

9.11.2011

to wind up the debate on the statement by the Vice-President of the Commission/High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy
pursuant to Rule 110(2) of the Rules of Procedure

Helmut Scholz, Marie-Christine Vergiat, Willy Meyer on behalf of the GUE/NGL Group

B7‑0583/2011

European Parliament resolution on the upcoming EU-US summit and Transatlantic Economic Council

The European Parliament,

–   having regard to Rule 110(2) of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas the beginning of the 21st century saw a shift towards a multi-polar world which needs collective management of common problems at international level; whereas both the EU and the US need to adapt to this situation by taking a cooperative approach to their international relations;

B.  whereas the EU and the US economies account together for about half of the entire world economy, and whereas the two economies have therefore a special responsibility to solve the current economic and financial crisis which is effecting not only Europe and the US, but also the global economy and political developments worldwide;

C. whereas in the context of the crisis the unemployment rate has reached 9.1 percent in the USA and 9.5 percent in the EU respectively; whereas youth unemployment has reached 24.6 percent (19 years and under) in the USA and surpassed recently 20 percent in the EU (25 years and under) and hit record highs of more than 40 percent in Spain and Greece;

D. whereas according to the Congressional Budget Office between 1979 and 2007 in the United States the inflation-adjusted average real after-tax household income for the 1 percent with the highest income grew by 275 percent, while for the twenty percent of the population with the lowest income the increase over these 28 years was merely 18 percent; whereas a similar, though less excessive, trend of more and more unequal wealth distribution can also be observed in the European Union;

E.  whereas in both the United States and in Europe people protest in front of the big banks and stock exchanges as symbolic locations, against the growing social and economic inequality, corporate power and influence on governments, particularly from the financial markets sector; whereas people refuse to pay the bill for the failures of the banking sector;

F.  whereas both the United States and the EU and its Member States are not meeting their commitments with regard to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals, with only three years left to avoid a major failure;

G. whereas the war in Afghanistan continues and resulted already in tens of thousands of civilian casualties and a disastrous destabilisation of the country and the entire region; whereas in fact none of this country’s problems have been solved through the predominantly military policy of the NATO alliance;

H. whereas the United States and NATO progressively undermine international law by violating the principle of territorial integrity of third states and the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, as the drone attacks in Pakistan and recent NATO interventions have shown;

I.   whereas the United States and some Members States of the European Union – despite their own commitments towards the establishment of a two-state-solution – still hinder Palestine to become member in the United Nations Organisation; whereas the Quartet for many years failed to contribute to the solution of the Middle East conflict;

J.   whereas despite many proclamations little progress has been achieved in the area of nuclear disarmament; whereas instead of seeking cooperation with Russia on security issues, unilaterally components of a missile defence system are about to be installed by the USA in different parts of Europe;

K. whereas the Obama administration did not lift the sanctions against Cuba;

L.  whereas the death penalty continues to exist in 38 states of the USA and at federal level;

M. whereas in the so-called fight against terrorism the CIA used secret prisons in today’s Member States of the EU for illegal interrogations using means of torture before bringing suspected persons to the US, where the case of Abd al-Raim al-Nashiri, who might receive the capital punishment, is an example of;

1.  Declares its solidarity with the protests and the call of the participants in the demonstrations for an end to financial market capitalism and a radical redistribution of wealth; calls on political leaders of the EU and the US to end their ignorance regarding the protests and to find solutions for the current economic, financial and social crisis that meet the interest of the peoples, break the dictate of the financial markets and endeavours instead an alternative policy towards the implementation of the necessary social and ecologically sustainable restructuring of global economic development as laid down in the Stieglitz Commission’s report;

2.  Calls on the US government to give up its resistance to a global financial transaction tax;

3.  Calls on the transatlantic partners to address the systemic causes of the economic and financial crises and to take immediately strong steps towards rules for a ‘new economic order’; demands a shift of policy focus away from bailing out speculators and towards employment creation and ending poverty globally; calls therefore for the respective changes in the future agenda of the TEC and the establishment of close and transparent ties to the TLD;

4.  Recognizes the proposed American Jobs Act as a first step in shifting the policy focus to demand creation and calls on the EU Commission to develop own policy proposals for employment creation in the crisis hit EU Member States in that direction;

5.  Expresses its deep concern about the fact that the UN Charta is constantly undermined; insists on a policy change that replaces the military power strategies of NATO; calls on the transatlantic partners to put into practice their commitment to multilateralism, and in particular international cooperation within the United Nations;

6.  Welcomes the accession of Palestine to UNESCO and deplores the freezing of its membership fees to UNESCO by the US following this decision;

7.  Calls for the immediate recognition of a Palestinian State and acceptance of the application for membership to the UN; reiterates its strong support for the two-state solution, based on the 1967 borders and Jerusalem as capital of both states, with the State of Israel and an independent, democratic, contiguous and viable State of Palestine living side by side in peace and security; calls on the transatlantic partners to work towards this end;

8.  Reiterates that the so-called fight against terrorism cannot be waged in breach of international law and at the expense of established, basic and shared values such as respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, the rule of law and the relevant Geneva Conventions;

9.  Criticises the present Foreign- and Security Policies as well as the Diplomatic cooperation of both the EU and US, as well as between member states in the Middle East and the North African region, in particular regarding Syria, Iran and Libya, asks for a reorientation including Commercial and Cultural policies, which has to be strictly based on the principles of non-interference and territorial integrity; calls on the transatlantic partners to work towards lasting and durable peace and security in the region;

10. Calls on the US and the EU and its member states to withdraw all military from the African continent; calls for joint efforts to support African governments and the African Union in their struggle to end poverty and to achieve economic and social development; calls for financial compensation for the African Union budget following the collapse of payments from the AU’s major financial contributor Libya due to the NATO intervention;

11. Reminds the promises of President Obama towards nuclear disarmament; urges the EU and the US to seek to ensure the revival of negotiated arms control and disarmament at multilateral level within the UN system; reiterates its call to the US:

Ø  not to link nuclear disarmament with the unnecessary US/NATO project of missile defence for Europe;

Ø  not to compensate nuclear disarmament measures by conventional armament;

Ø  to stop the development of new generations of battlefield nuclear weapons;

Ø  to ratify the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty;

Ø  to ratify the Ottawa Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and their Destruction;

Ø  to ratify the Convention on Cluster Munitions;

Ø  to abandon its resistance to the Compliance Protocol to the UN Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention;

Ø  to contribute to the strengthening of the NPT regime by strictly implementing all NPT obligations, in particular Article 2;

Ø  to give new impetus to the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the strengthening of its organisation;

12. Calls on the United States to lift the blockade against Cuba, to liberate the 4 Cuban citizens detained in US prisons, let them return to Cuba, including Rene Gonzalez, released earlier, but forced to stay in Florida, and to close the military base of Guantanamo;

13. Calls on the United States and the European Union to change their political and commercial relationship in particular with Latin America, including an end to the course of concluding solely bilateral and non-reciprocal oriented free trade agreements and to start instead a new era of trade and political relations based on partnership, mutual respect and constructive, strengthened intra-regional cooperation aimed at supporting the Latin American governments in their work for social, ecological and economic development and the advancement of social and individual human rights, and to join efforts in defeating drug related crimes, as the US and the EU are the major drug markets and arms suppliers;

14. Rejects the aggressive market access agenda of the United States and the European Union and calls especially on the United States to give up its blockade of achieving agreement on the pro-LDC package at the upcoming WTO ministerial conference;

15. Calls on the United States to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC);

16. Demands once again that the United States abolish the death penalty at federal and state levels;

17. Notes the opening of negotiations in March 2011 on the EU-US agreement on the protection of personal data; recalls its position from the 11 November 2010 Resolution on the forthcoming 2010 EU-US Summit on this agreement and emphasises that such a framework agreement should ensure a high level of protection of fundamental rights laying down legally binding and enforceable data protection standards and establishing mechanisms to ensure effective application of these standards in practice;

18. Reiterates its rejection of bulk and passenger data exchange with the United States and with all third countries in general in the so-called fight against terrorism; highlights the need to be fully informed on a reciprocal basis with the US authorities on all international data exchange developments;

19. Takes the view that climate change, alternative energy production and energy efficiency should become priorities on the TEC agenda; encourages, in this context, the TEC to cooperate on energy saving measures taken to combat climate change; calls for closer regulatory cooperation in the field of energy efficiency standards for products;

20. Calls on the TEC to extend the cooperation aimed at achieving common standards in electro-mobility to other producers and to use this historic opportunity to finally offer fair trade conditions to the respective raw material suppliers like for example Bolivia, instead of endeavouring on a renewed and fierce competition for raw materials at the costs of the poor;

21. Underlines that the Rio+20 Summit represents a crucial opportunity to reinforce the political commitment for sustainable development at global level and the partnerships between industrialised and developing countries; underlines that the conclusion of an international legally binding agreement consistent with the principle of a "common but differentiated responsibility" must remain the overall goal of the Durban conference; calls on the transatlantic partners to work for an post-2012 international legally-binding agreement that would meet the 2ºC objective; calls in the light of a record growth of more than 6 percent in CO2-emissions in 2010 for a rapid increase in clean technology transfer from EU and US to China and India;

22. Takes the view that an intensification of EU-US parliamentary political dialogue is necessary and important; insists that this dialogue develops in an open and transparent manner; calls on the EU and the US administration and parliaments to pay more attention to civil society relationships, including regularly consultations with representatives of the civil society,

23. Expresses its deep concerns regarding imbalances in legislative dialogue with the United States and its impact on European legislation; believes that the work in the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC) and the Transatlantic Legislators Dialogue (TLD) must be made transparent and accountable;

24. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Parliaments of the Member States, and the President and Congress of the United States of America.