Study reveals MEPs’ protectionist natures

By Karen Carstens

Date: 10/06/04

MOST MEPs harbour major protectionist tendencies, according to a new study by Stockholm-based think-tank Timbro.

Ironically dubbed Shining city on a hill? it examines the voting patterns of 384 MEPs from eight member states along free trade lines and concludes that only 12 can be called 'free traders'.

Sweden had the most free traders and France the least. The other countries represented in the study are Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.

Only one MEP, Cristina García-Orcoyen Tormo, of Spain's centre-right Popular Party, voted as a free trader every time. But Spain provided one-fifth of the protecionists in the study.

Of the 50 observed French MEPs, 31 were branded 'protectionists', including the country's Socialist former premier and agriculture minister, Michel Rocard. “A true free trader votes for proposals that reduce trade barriers and subsidies distorting international trade,” said Timbro chief economist Fredrik Erixon.

“The number of MEPs voting against both barriers and subsidies is extremely low in Parliament. The protectionist group is more than eight times as big as the free trader group.”

Erixon co-wrote the study along with Niklas Rossbach, a researcher at the European University Institute in Florence.

'Shining city on a hill?', a study by TIMBRO, a Stockholm-based think-tank, examines the voting patterns of 384 MEPs from eight Member States along free trade lines and concludes that most harbour major protectionist tendencies, and only 12 MEPs can be called 'free traders'.

http://www.timbro.com/pdf/91-7566-565-4.pdf http://www.timbro.com/pdf/91-7566-565-4.pdf

---