Plenary speech on access to public procurement markets

Marietje Schaake (ALDE) - Madam President, although we are not obliged to do so through the WTO GPA agreements, the EU chooses openness to our markets, including public procurement, and that makes sense. Other countries are, sadly, not always acting in the spirit of reciprocity towards us, and this impacts on our businesses, whether large or small. It may be tempting to some to answer protectionist measures such as ‘buy American’ with ‘buy French’ or ‘buy European’, but we must resist such a race to the bottom, where one protectionist measure leads to another. Instead of being reactive, together we must be proactive. This means we have to act strongly together and leverage the European single market while seeking free trade and access, also for our businesses, to public procurement globally. The amendments before us are the start of a process in which we must think broadly about the appropriate trade defence instruments while striving for global growth and development and trade. We are, of course, particularly aware of the importance of public procurement and reciprocity in our dealings and negotiations with the United States over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.