L'UE dispose de plusieurs options pour ouvrir des négociations transatlantiques dans le but de convaincre le président américain Donald Trump de ne pas imposer de droits de douane préjudiciables sur les marchandises de l'UE, a déclaré à Euronews Pascal Lamy.
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00:00...
00:08Europe is in an existential crisis,
00:10with war on the continent, an unpredictable US
00:13and potential trade tariffs along the way.
00:15For the Europe conversation, I catch up with former head of the WTO, Pascal Lamy.
00:20He says the EU should negotiate rather than retaliate,
00:24but with a gun in its pocket.
00:26Pascal Lamy, thank you very much for joining us on the Europe conversation.
00:30I'm going to start with you to ask you about your impression of the world we're in now.
00:36Now that Donald Trump is back in the White House,
00:38that there seems to be a backlash against globalization,
00:42against free trade, against basic policies in relation to civil rights and so on.
00:49How do you feel the world is right now?
00:53It's in bad shape and in a much worse shape than the world I've been living with
01:02and working with for many years of my life.
01:06So I'm getting old and I'm worried that, let's say for the last five to ten years,
01:17the system we had, which was far from perfect,
01:22but still had a number of benefits in harnessing globalization
01:30and regulating a number of possible problems,
01:37a lot of that is disappearing.
01:40Starting, of course, with the invasion of Ukraine,
01:44which is just sitting on any principle of international law.
01:49And now the U.S. wants to overhaul the system.
01:54To do what?
01:56Unclear, but they both say this system is not good for us
02:04and we need to use the power we have to change it.
02:07And this, of course, puts the EU,
02:10which is the epitome of a regulated, disciplined,
02:17ordo-liberalist system, in a bind.
02:21And I'm worried about the world.
02:25I'm very much worried about whether the EU,
02:29as the future of my children and grandchildren,
02:33will be able to overcome this challenge,
02:37which, in my view, is existential.
02:41And how would you think that the EU needs to respond now?
02:43Does it need to just wait and see what Trump does?
02:47And if there are tafts, should the EU respond accordingly?
02:51Now, the first thing the EU should do, and has done, is get prepared.
02:58They've been thinking about that for months.
03:01The notion that Trump would be president of the U.S.
03:05appeared, unfortunately, in my view, quite some time ago.
03:09So then the big question is, retaliate or negotiate?
03:17There are things the U.S. wants from us
03:20and there are things we want from the U.S.
03:22Such as?
03:23Other than being shot at.
03:28So there is a range of issues where we probably could open
03:35an interesting transatlantic negotiation.
03:39So that's the case for wait and see.
03:42And say, which EU authorities have been saying,
03:47we're ready to look at a deal.
03:48So what kind of deals?
03:49What are you talking about specifically that we would negotiate with,
03:52that we have, you know, in our armament?
03:55I mean, for instance, take the example of cars.
04:00He's got a crappy argument and he's got a reasonable argument.
04:07The crappy argument is, Angela, there are plenty of Mercedes in New York,
04:13zero Chevron in Berlin.
04:15This is a problem.
04:17As long as there won't be an equal number of Chevrons in Berlin,
04:21this is a problem.
04:23Stupid thing.
04:25Where he's right is that the EU has an import tariff of 10%
04:30and the EU and the U.S. have an import tariff for cars at 3%.
04:35Now, is it the reason why there is no Chevron in Berlin?
04:38No way, but it exists.
04:44So maybe we could accept a 5 or 6 or 7 or 8% tariff in the U.S.
04:53if they accept to lower their tariff on things which we would like to export more in the U.S.
05:00and which are not in his mind as a big problem.
05:05Or maybe we could negotiate that against something to be done in NATO
05:11that the U.S. don't want to do but that we want to do.
05:14So there are plenty of things.
05:16Now, of course, and that's my experience of negotiating with the U.S.
05:22and China and other big shots when I was in this business,
05:28you should do that with a gun in your pocket.
05:33If you negotiate with the mafia, you may have to, but you need a gun in your pocket.
05:41You need to show your strength and say, ready to deal.
05:46But if the deal does not work,
05:49if you believe you will debalance a deal just because you are threatening us,
05:54we have the means to retaliate, which is true because we have a large market
05:58and U.S. exporters of a number of products will have problems if we retaliate.
06:05Where did it all go wrong?
06:06I mean, do you understand the backlash against globalization?
06:10I've always said, and you and others always heard me saying,
06:17that a globalization is here to stay, not least because three quarters,
06:25at least, of the people of this planet like globalization
06:30because they see it as a better future for them because they are poor.
06:37And second, it's here to stay, but in a different shape.
06:45But the world will not de-globalize.
06:47Now, what I've always said is globalization is efficient and painful.
06:55And it is efficient because it is painful and it is painful because it is efficient.
06:59If I do something better than you do and you do something better than I do, it's a win-win.
07:06And speaking of shocks from outside, you have Elon Musk,
07:10who's basically in the White House now,
07:13saying that he's interfering in U.K. politics, but also German politics.
07:18Do you think European politics can stay the course to protect itself?
07:22I mean, we have to.
07:25At the end of the day, we've mentioned the environment, we've mentioned trade.
07:31At the end of the day, what matters is values.
07:35And are those values being diminished?
07:37They are European values.
07:39But are they being diminished by the rise to the rise?
07:42Of course they have been diminished.
07:43I mean, democracy has receded by, let's say, 15 or 20 percent for the last 20 years.
07:52The biggest danger, when I discuss with my American friends who don't like Trump,
07:59and I have more of that in my sample, understandably,
08:04European Social Democrats are flabbergasted at Trump,
08:08although we try to understand.
08:11What they tell me is that the real danger is if the roots of American democracy are rotten.
08:21Corruption, I've been working with Transparency International,
08:25who is the main international organization fighting corruption for 35 years now.
08:34Corruption is a terrible destruction of democracy.
08:41Just before I let you go, the Mercosur trade deal,
08:44which has been sort of on the table for decades, pretty much.
08:47Your own country, France, is really dead against it.
08:50So are other countries, but France is really leading the charge.
08:53What do you think France should do in relation to Mercosur?
08:56Can you understand the French farmers and agricultural industry?
09:01I can understand part of why French farmers are unhappy.
09:08And I do understand why they are unhappy.
09:12What I know is that the reasons they have to be unhappy
09:16have nothing to do with Europe or Mercosur.
09:18They have to do with the way the French have handled the common agricultural policy within France.
09:25So for the French farmers who are angry, and I can understand why some of them are angry, not all.
09:33Some of them are doing pretty well, but the smaller farmers are angry.
09:36Smaller farmers have good reason to be angry, but it's not because of Europe.
09:41Europe has always had them.
09:42It's not because of Mercosur.
09:45It's because of the way the French have interpreted, translated, implemented a number of, for instance,
09:54precautionary regulations coming from Brussels.
09:57So Mercosur plays the role of a scapegoat.
10:03But I mean, it's not just the French farmers.
10:05Farmers across Europe would say that they are producing to a particularly high standard,
10:11but then what they'll have to endure is beef and agricultural products coming into their market
10:18that is produced at a much lower standard, therefore cheaper.
10:21OK.
10:21This is wrong.
10:23There is no chicken that enters the EU market
10:31if this chicken does not follow the same regulatory phytosanitary standards
10:36as the one which are implemented in Europe.
10:39So this notion that importing food is displacing nationally produced food
10:47because it's lower quality, sanitary and phytosanitary,
10:52I'm not talking about the quality of the food itself.
10:54Yeah, of course, you're talking about the production standards.
10:57This argument that we are the victims of low standard imports is wrong.
11:05Simply wrong.
11:05It's just not the fact.
11:09That's the way they paint it.
11:11That's the way some of them feel it.
11:13They also feel that the checks aren't there.
11:16So even if they have to apply the standards in Mercosur countries,
11:20they won't be applied properly and therefore there will be a loophole.
11:23But that's another story.
11:26The checks are for everybody and we do import quite a lot from Mercosur today.
11:31So if we have a check problem, let's solve the check problem.
11:34But it's not in importing a bit more from Mercosur
11:38in order to export quite more to Mercosur that the check problem will be changed.
11:44I do agree that we may have a check problem.
11:47But if we have it, let's solve it.
11:49Nothing to do with Mercosur.
11:51OK, Pascal Lamy, thank you very much for joining us on the conversation.
11:53My pleasure.