By Art Jimenez
A week ago on 16 September, the European Parliament (EP) passed Resolution “2020/2782(RSP) on the situation in the Philippines, including the case of Maria Ressa” with a vote of 626 in favor, 7 against, and 52 abstentions.
The Resolution was predicated with 20 Whereas clauses and enumerated a menu of to-do lists for our government. Otherwise… an “Or else” warning:
“Given the seriousness of the human rights violations in the country, (Resolution) calls on the European Commission, in the absence of any substantial improvement and willingness to cooperate on the part of the Philippine authorities, to immediately initiate the procedure which could lead to the temporary withdrawal of GSO+ preferences.” (underscoring mine)
The “to do” menu enumerates 23 items that clearly interfere with our internal affairs and violate our sovereignty. Four of these have seen a lot of printed space and broadcast minutes, namely:
- Drop the charges against Maria Ressa and her reporter Reynaldo Santos;
- Drop the charges against Sen. Leila de Lima. And while in jail, for government to “provide her with adequate security and sanitary conditions.” Quite a bit of an oxymoron, I dare say.
The Resolution described the Ressa and de Lima cases as “politically motivated” and called on the EU representatives in the Philippines to closely monitor the progress of their cases.
- Renew the broadcast license (sic) of ABS-CBN;
- Halt the procedures to reinstate the death penalty.
The fifth is not an order but an expression of “serious concern” at the passage of the Anti-Terrorism Act and editorialized that “in no circumstance can advocacy, protest, dissent, strikes and other similar exercise of civil and political rights be considered terroristic acts.”
Let me go back a bit.
Recall that the cyber libel court case for which the Ressa and Santos were found guilty were filed by a private businessman who, in vain, requested both defendants several times to remove the libelous allegations against him from their website before he sued.
Note that the three drug cases against de Lima are “non-bailable offenses” for allegedly violating the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002. Also, her first failed attempt at securing bail was filed more than a year after she has been in custody.
ABS-CBN violated its franchise obligations. Hence Congress denied its renewal petition.
The decision-makers in these cases are the Judiciary and Legislative branches, respectively, of the National Government.
I would like to see, even know, if members of the European Parliament (MEPs) or any of their Resolution could overturn decisions of their own courts of law and country parliaments.
The Resolution likewise called on our government “to step up efforts to tackle corruption effectively…” and “to support the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights specifically for “due diligence processes for investment, development and business projects.”
Government, in fact, has already spent so much time, effort, and resources, in doing precisely these two things since 2016. Just observe the Justice Department, NBI, Ombudsman on their corruption investigation tasks even as both chambers of Congress turning into perpetual corruption probe bodies instead of doing their primary task of law-making.
Corruption today is worse than ever before where millions of pesos are but loose change. Thus, the non-stop probe.
For its part, the DTI, BOI, and PEZA have not ceased creating an environment conducive to investments and business operations through simplification and other innovations.
The others in the menu are the charges that the Duterte administration violates human rights of women, children, indigenous peoples, and LGBTQ1, including the so-called EJKs or extra-judicial killings. The Resolution, however, is eerily quiet on its sources of data as very little and unvetted statistics were cited). I, for one, will be glad if tireless efforts are exerted to ferret out the real truth to these claims of violence against our own people.
Duterte sympathizers would naturally ascribe these to the yellows of the Liberal Party and their media friends and the communists led by Joma Sison and his top lieutenants who are enjoying refugee status in the Netherlands under the protection, of all offices, the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Resolution authors, possibly led by their spokesperson Hannah Neumann, are lazy, not having turned even a page of official Philippine documents, nor interviewed even the opposition members of Congress, but instead relied on a really free press for much of their spurious data.
By the way, Neumann was elected to a five-year term in EP in 2019. She represents the merged The Greens-European Free Alliance. The European Green Party is a green energy advocate while the European Free Alliance represents “stateless nations.” She was the lone member of her political group to sponsor the Resolution.
And now to the possible “temporary withdrawal of GSP+ preferential treatment on identified Philippine exports to Europe. What are we to lose?
When I say Europe here, I limit myself to the 28 member-countries of the European Union and not to Europe as a continent. The latter has 44 countries and four territories or dependencies. Outside of the EU, we also do bilateral trade with the remaining 16 states and four territories.
For the benefit of business and economics students, the 28 EU member-countries are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden.
Let’s look at the balance of trade between the Philippines and the European Union (EU). In 2019, EU imported from the Philippines goods worth €7.5 billion (read 7.5 billion euros), of which some 25 percent or €1.8 billion entered European ports with minimal or zero tariff under GSP+ (+ means “expanded list of goods”).
In the same year, EU exported to the Philippines goods valued at €7.4 billion to the Philippines.
Therefore, the balance of trade was in our favor in the amount of only €100 million.
If we are delisted from EU’s GSP+, we would naturally retaliate. In this case, EU also loses so much billion euros in exports to us. In short, it will be a loss-loss situation and not a win-loss proposition for EU and us.
With this, do you think EU will remove us from their GSP+ list?
And even if they do, delisting will involve some two-year notice or lead time for some due diligence on the part of the EU, a renegotiation and/or fulfillment of some EU requirements.
Besides, just how large is €7.5 billion in lost sales to EU? In U.S. dollars (USD), €7.5 billion is around US$8.8 billion for one year. That translates to around US$733.3 million a month.
Listen! Our OFWs remitted just this June US$2.74 billion to their relatives.
From January-June 2020, OFW remittances totalled US10.96 billion or about 4 percent lower than the US10.96 billion they forwarded to their loved ones year-on-year. The decrease is minimal considering an unnumbered thousands of our OFWs lost their jobs.
And that US10.96 billion for six months is already way ahead of the €7.5 billion we earned from exporting to Europe for 12 months!
The European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP) and other business groups personalized that song entitled “Fools Rush In.” Too bad, they were taken in by the EP Resolution.
Which is really “Much Ado About Nothing.”
Sorry, sir William!
