Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-05-Speech-2-015"
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"en.19991005.3.2-015"2
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"Madam President, President Prodi, Commissioner Byrne, sometimes you get the impression that European food policy only moves forward a step when there is a new scandal. BSE and dioxin were good examples of this. President Prodi, on hearing today your very interesting analysis, what is lacking as far as I am concerned is precisely what you referred to at the very end: a bit more passion on this question. For politics consists, to a very large degree, of facts but also of passion. Otherwise, nothing new could be developed.
For years I was rapporteur for the budget in the Committee on the Environment. That is the only real access point. What we need is precisely the opposite. Parliament must have some control over the agency and consistently be able to influence it. When Parliament decides, then things need to start moving in an agency of the kind we are discussing. In this way, the agency will really be working for the citizens of Europe. That is precisely what we want. That is also, in fact, what we have been paid for.
Commissioner, you have correctly stated that we require a rapid alert system. We need a precautionary system. There is the concept of ‘company liability’. However, Commissioner, we have been experiencing just the opposite in recent years. All that about the rapid alert agreement was a complete mockery. The Member States have turned the rapid alert system completely on its head. That must be said clearly so that we might obtain the basis for a new environmental and consumer policy.
Commissioner, let me finally broach another matter. There is a European Directive on the placing of plant protection products on the market. In 1991 it was adopted, and in 1993 it came into force. At that time, we solemnly promised one another to place some 700 active substances which are in circulation on a European positive list. More than half of this entire period is now behind us, Commissioner, and just one single active substance is to be found on this positive list after six years. All I can do, then, is to ask you: where are the hundreds of officials whose job it is to conduct the relevant examination? I think it is high time we took action. This is the next scandal in the offing, for which I should not like to be responsible. I should therefore like to ask you, on behalf of my group, to take up these individual points with gusto. We support you. And I must say again that I am in the same position as my priest in church: he too is always speaking to the converted, namely to those who are there. To them, there is no need to say anything. Once again, the Council is not present. That really riles me.
I believe, Mr Prodi, that it is not just a question of an agency but of whether we in Europe are going to obtain a European Framework Directive on Foodstuffs such as we have been demanding from you for more than ten years. Unfortunately, it has not been forthcoming.
I believe we have a host of good individual directives which, however, circle round Europe like satellites. Unfortunately, no-one complies with them. Particularly today, it once again becomes clear with what degree of commitment the Member States of this Union perceive this subject. For, as you have correctly explained, the Council of the European Community did not even consider it necessary to be present here during the first debate.
I regard this as scandalous, for the dioxin debate was a problem for the Member States and not for the Commission. I believe it would only have been good manners for them to be represented here in high numbers. For, again and again, in the sphere of foodstuffs, we have the problem of the Member States not transposing what the Commission and Parliament have quite rightly decided.
Commissioner, I share your view that the agency is something requiring real thought. I would, however, warn you against constructing a satellite of the kind of which we already have many examples in Europe: that is to say, glorified rotary clubs which operate on a very individual basis and over which Parliament has virtually no control at all."@en1
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