Dear Colleagues, dear young farmers,

When it turned out few days ago that I would replace Mr O’Sullivan today, Pascale was so kind and informed me about the issues that you would like to hear about, so I tried to structure my intervention accordingly.

In this available 15-20 minutes I won’t be able to explore these issues in details, I will just give you some food for thoughts and will be happy to answer your questions later on (also through the organisers)

So my menu for today is

A bit of global context, EU as a global player will help understand why we pursue such an ambitious trade agenda.

Then the evergreen DDA where I will address some of the issues you raised, like export refunds and direct payments.

You asked for info on the FTAs with Korea and Mercosur

Fair competition, the problem of "level playing field" is also high on the agenda these days

You also asked for info on the protection of GIs in third countries.

next slide

Let's look at the place the EU occupies in global trade, in global economy.

From left to right you can see the share of the 4 biggest players, EU, US, Japan and China in exports and import of goods, services; in FDI inflows and outflows and their stocks.

The EU has the biggest chunk in all these categories. In some categories these 4 players cover more than 50% of the total value.

It is interesting to note that our economy is becoming a transformation economy. It means that around 2/3 of our imports are actually inputs in the production process of higher value added products.

Being the largest trade power in the world it’s obvious that for the EU economy it is necessary to have strong, rules based multilateral trade system in place.

A system where everyone plays according to the same rules.
Where the exports of our companies are not hindered by tariff or regulatory barriers and we have reliable access to quality raw materials at competitive prices.

We can be a major winner of multilateral