Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-05-Speech-2-017"
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"en.19991005.3.2-017"2
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"Madam President, Mr Prodi, I know that I was not very forbearing with you at the last part-session. I am therefore saying today, quite openly too, that I should like to have heard the speech you made today before now. It was very good. If you also really mean what you just said, then you may yet become a hero of mine. You have not occupied that position in the past, but I am prepared to think again. Until now, I have only wanted to place David Byrne in that position.
Finally, I would say Mr Prodi (and with this I end my speech) that if we want to ensure that our citizens regain the confidence of which you have spoken, then we must be democratic. I assume, Mr Prodi, that this proposal for an agency, as you call it, is to be put before Parliament. You said that you had still not decided. Then I can only say that you have been lucky! It is this Chamber which must decide, and it is not you in the Commission who decides. In this way, we shall certainly arrive at a satisfactory solution. Thank you for your attention.
What, then, are we talking about here today, Mr Prodi? You have made it clear. We are talking about the safety of our citizens, about health and about consumer protection in the European Union. Let me, therefore, touch upon three points to which you also referred to some extent in your speech. First of all, what we call the precautionary principle. This must be the dominant goal of the policy of the European Union and of all its institutions. I shall give you an example, Mr Prodi, which you will certainly understand. This principle must be as important for us in the European Union and have as high a priority as, for example, the criterion of price stability for the European Central Bank. Have you understood this? I hope so, Mr Prodi. The Member States have not understood this. The Council has still not understood it. It is also your task to get this message across. We shall do our bit. That you can be certain of. The Council and the Member States are still light years away from this attitude. Therefore, work together with us in this area.
Secondly: what does the precautionary principle actually mean? It is about closing the loopholes that still exist in legislation. You therefore referred to a White Paper which David Byrne presented at the hearing in the European Parliament and for which we were very grateful to him. What ought this White Paper to contain? It must be very ambitious, Mr Prodi. I would quote here for you, in summary form only, a number of tasks which must be indispensable component parts of this White Paper. These include safeguard clauses for foodstuffs. At present, the European Commission is still not allowed to issue any safeguard clauses relating to foodstuffs. It only has this right in the veterinary field, and that is a flaw.
Let us consider the area of supervisory authority. When it comes to supervision in third countries, we may not exercise any supervisory authority in respect, for example, of fruit and vegetables. This is a shortcoming. Consider the so-called rapid alert system, the early warning system. This must be improved. You touched upon this subject, and I am grateful to you for doing so. However, I should also like to tell you how it can be improved. It must be made transparent. At present, the Member States pass on information to the Commission in confidence. This means that you, Mr Prodi, and you, Mr Byrne, have no right at all to inform our citizens about any dangers. This must be changed. This is not the sort of transparency which you and I value. This is not an instance of keeping the public informed.
It must be possible to improve the ways in which supervision is itself controlled in the Member States. The supervisory office in Dublin must have the ability to exercise supervisory authority in the Member States as soon as there are grounds for suspicion, and it must also have investigative powers. We need legislation in connection with feedingstuffs. You have referred to this subject, and I say again that we need a positive list and we need supervisory controls in the field of feedingstuffs. We do not have any of this. We need the duty of declaration, something which I and my colleagues, Mr Graefe zu Baringdorf and Mr Böge, have been demanding since the BSE scandal.
All this, Mr Prodi, must be achieved by the Commission before the end of 1999. It is on this basis that I shall be assessing whether you really want to achieve your ambitious goals. You have time before the end of the year to complete this White Paper. We in the European Parliament will then have time in the year 2000 to work on this. That is our task. We must change and improve the systems of supervision and monitoring. We have established that they do not work. For example, I am still calling for a dioxin register. I have already done this once before in this Chamber. We need a dioxin register which also includes other sources of dioxin such as incinerating plants and other facilities. In this way, you can see the close, two-way connection between environmental policy and consumer protection and vice versa. The two cannot be separated. The one is crucial to the other. How can it be, Mr Prodi, that fish for human consumption may have higher dioxin levels than meat? You need to change this.
The reports on residual matter which the Member States have, after a fashion, submitted to the Commission in recent years must be checked more thoroughly and more quickly. On the subject of antibiotics, why has more still not been done, Mr Prodi? We have known for months that a number of antibiotics in animal feed produce forms of resistance in humans. I therefore urge you to do something now, before the end of the year. Mr Florenz has touched on the subject of pesticides. There are more and more reports about the damage done to health and the environment by obsolete pesticides which no longer make sense in scientific terms. We need regulations to ensure that these are harmless.
I come now, Mr Prodi, to your, and my, favourite subject, and to the end of my speech. This is the third of my three points and concerns your “agency”. I put inverted commas around this, however the interpreters may translate these. What, then, do we want, Mr Prodi? What do you and I want? We want the best scientific expertise, we want transparency in everything and we want safe and harmless products for the citizens of the European Union. Is that what we have then Mr Prodi? I say to you, “yes”, we have a large part of this. During the BSE scandal, we ensured that the European Union’s scientific committees were restructured and that scientists are now appointed under an open appointments system, that their past careers and financial interests are known about and that the agendas, minutes and also minority opinions expressed are published on the Internet. That is what I want. I want transparency at a high level.
I do not, however, want what I fear you yourself want. I do not want industry exercising influence. You mentioned as an example the Medical Agency in London. It has the task of authorising drugs produced through biotechnology, and that is how it earns its money. If you make an agency responsible for doing this, then it is also responsible to industry. That is the wrong way to proceed, Mr Prodi, and I hope that you too will appreciate this very soon. With regard to what you are proposing, we must make it quite clear that we do not only want scientific expertise but also the exercise of supervision. If you were to discover today in the Commission, Mr Prodi, that there was a problem area in relation to the protection of plants, then you would have to be able to call upon the scientists to organise an investigation quickly, and I should like to be able to exercise supervision over them. Whatever else is created, there must therefore be a body of some kind, a subordinate authority. Whether we establish this on your own premises, Mr President, or at the joint research centre which we already have in the European Union or whether we locate it somewhere else, it is all the same to me. For me, the important things are supervision and transparency."@en1
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