(24/11/04) Dumpen van voedsel in Afrika is GEEN ontwikkelingssamenwerking

• 2004-11-24

De uitvoer van voedsel naar Afrika is geen oplossing voor de armoede op het continent, maar leidt integendeel tot meer armoede. Als de EU begaan is met ontwikkelingssamenwerking, dan moet ze beseffen dat een agressieve marktpolitiek daar niet toe bijdraagt.

FREEZE EXPORTS OF FROZEN CHICKEN TO AFRICA

Carl Schlyter (Greens/EFA - Sweden) stated from The Hague that free trade policies between unequal partners do not help to fight poverty. EU frozen chicken export to west and central Africa is evicting African poultry farmers from their local market. According to the Cameroon NGO, Citizens Association for the Defence of Collective Interest who organised a lunch briefing at The Hague at the occasion of the 8th ACP/EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, EU chicken export to Cameroon has increased by 2100% over the last six years and thrown thousands of farmers out of job. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. Increased EU food exports to ACP countries are continuously undermining the livelihoods of million of small producers who are facing unfair and aggressive competition. Carl Schlyter, co president of the Committee on Economic Development, Finance and Trade of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly, comments;

"The consequences of EU's frozen chicken export are yet another proof that WTO led trade liberalisation does not bring sustainable development nor does it fight poverty. It provokes the impoverishment of the populations in ACP countries, exacerbates social tensions, leads to violent conflicts, increases dependency on external aid and weakens the role of the state as provider of public services.

The EU can not continue to promote poverty eradication on the one hand and putting ACP countries under pressure to open up their market for EU goods on the other."

Carl Schlyter calls on the ACP-EU Economic Partnership Agreement negotiators to take into account these and other alarming factual findings to change the orientation of the negotiations from free trade to fair and equitable trade. If the objective of the EU development cooperation is poverty alleviation, then it has to shift its policy from economically motivated cooperation to development oriented strategy that includes the protection of fragile ACP economies from unequal, unfair and aggressive competition.

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