Iuliu Winkler, re-elected as INTA Vice-Chair
MEP Iuliu Winkler (EPP, RMDSZ) has been re-elected, this Monday, as Vice-Chair of the Committee on International Trade (INTA) of the European Parliament (EP). Under a Constitutive meeting at the half-point of the five-year mandate of the current EP legislature, INTA MEPs, based on the proposals of the political groups, have decided that the INTA Chair and the four Vice-Chairs ought to continue their activity.
Iuliu Winkler thanked his colleagues for their trust and for the chance to continue his projects and work started in 2014 as INTA´s Vice-Chair.
“We live in a fast-changing world, and this is also true for the international trade. Every 7th job in the EU is sustained by an exporting company, bringing the total number of export-linked jobs to 30 million. These are, generally speaking, highly specialized jobs, benefiting from an above-average salary. Exports are the engine of economic growth and they are extremely important for states in Central and Eastern Europe in their effort to advance on the path towards European convergence. The EP and INTA will play a significant role in the ´Brexit´ negotiations, as well as in the possible reconfiguration of the Trans-Atlantic relationship, for which all the prerequisites are foreseeable in the near future. In this complex context, promoting the interests of European SMEs in the global trade arena and safeguarding the interests of European industry in the face of fierce, and not always fair, global competition, will continue to be some of my key priorities”, declared the RMDSZ MEP at the end of the INTA Constitutive meeting.
According to his views, for the EU, international trade is an important tool for the promotion, at global level, of European principles and values as well as human rights and democracy. “Globalization has brought us a dramatic growth of inequality. Having parliamentary tools adjacent to trade agreements and the new EU trade policy, I will join those who, at EU level, have ambitioned for prioritizing a taming of globalization through regulations that would lead to a fairer distribution of the benefits that international trade generates, for each of the Union´s citizens”, further added MEP Winkler.
During Monday´s meeting, MEPs have re-elected Bernd Lange (S&D, DE) as INTA Chair for the next two and a half years, as well as Tokia Saifi (EPP, FR), Yannick Jadot (Greens/EFA, FR), Iuliu Winkler (EPP, RO) and Jan Zahradil (ECR, CZ) as Vice-Chairs.
