Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-15-Speech-1-059"
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, first of all I should like to thank you, Mrs Jeggle, very much for your report. After all, it is the first which you have tabled in the House. I should also like very much to thank the Members of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development and the other committees, which have actively participated in the consultations, for their constructive cooperation.
Thirdly, Mrs Jeggle also addressed the situation in 2003 and subsequent years. Here, the Commission has decided that appropriations are only to be withdrawn once the political situation in Serbia has changed dramatically. If this is the case, the Commission will decide when it reviews the financial perspective in 2002 – as it decided to do in Berlin – how to meet any possible needs.
At this stage, the Commission has specifically decided not to prejudice anything here either. In addition, the Commission has decided that, as a general rule, funds can only be taken from heading 1a if sufficient funds are not available from other sources, and at the moment it is far from certain that this will be the case.
Mrs Jeggle, you proposed that we should at least utilise the appropriations in 1b – i.e. those for rural development – and you linked this to the disastrous storms in Badem-Württemberg in which many trees were uprooted by the strong winds. This is a much more complex problem because here the Commission had originally intended to make it possible precisely to transfer funds between the two sub-headings. However, this was rejected by Parliament. That is why a transfer of this kind is not possible on the basis of the Financial Regulation currently in force and the Interinstitutional Agreement.
I now come to the question which Mrs Keppelhoff asked concerning what ECOFIN actually did decide. Well, the proposals which Mrs Schreyer circulated to ECOFIN were rejected for the time being. At the moment, however, we are, of course, still in the discussion phase; the actual budget debate on the 2001 budget is yet to take place. The rejection does not primarily or exclusively concern this issue of the 300 million; the proposals as a whole were given a negative reception by ECOFIN.
Amendment No 8, to which Mr Mulder, in particular, referred, concerns a study on alternative ways of covering financial losses arising in the event of outbreaks of animal diseases. The study which Mr Mulder mentioned was also intended to examine the possibility of introducing a compulsory insurance scheme. We will commission a study of this kind. However, I have to tell you that the results will not be available until the end of the year. We will not obtain the results from those carrying out the study any earlier than that.
I also share the view expressed in the amendment that producers ought to take on more of the financial responsibility for eradicating animal diseases. However, in principle, it is the Member States who are responsible for this issue. That is why initially all we can do here is carry out an evaluation of the possible ways in which we at Community level might support the Member States in setting up schemes of this kind. In any case, this issue ought to be dealt with in the context of the review of veterinary legislation which is currently being carried out by the Directorate-General responsible for public and animal health.
Mrs Redondo asked a number of questions about the organisation of the market in fruit and vegetables, about nuts and about ornamental plants, and Mr Cunha asked about processed tomatoes. As planned, the Commission will submit a report on the functioning of the organisation of the market in fruit and vegetables before the end of this year. This report will not only cover fresh fruit and vegetables but also processed fruit and vegetables, and therefore processed tomatoes. We expect this report to be ready at the beginning of the second half of this year. As far as promoting ornamental plants is concerned – or to be more precise, Mrs Redondo, publicity for the ornamental plants sector – it is true that the Commission is carrying out a review here. In fact, we made this a requirement when the legal arrangements were introduced and, depending on the outcome of the assessment, we will table a proposal in sufficient time to ensure that there is no interruption in the publicity campaign.
I am pleased that Parliament agrees with the main thrust of the Commission's proposals, namely that we need more continuity and that prices therefore need to be fixed on a multiannual basis. With your permission, I will first comment on the background to, and the content of, the proposals which we have made. It is absolutely right – as has been stated here – that the price package is no longer as significant as it was in the past. As a logical consequence of the multiannual approach which we chose for Agenda 2000, the Commission has now also proposed to set the institutional prices and amounts for those sectors for which this is actually still necessary for an unlimited period of time.
This offers our farmers a considerably more stable framework for their longer-term planning, although we do not, in principle, rule out making any changes which may later prove to be necessary. The only exception to this multiannual approach in our proposals concerns the sugar sector, where the production quota regime currently in force – as most of you here probably know – will expire in the 2000/2001 financial year. That is why it would not have been appropriate – given that this final year has to be fixed now first – to introduce a change here. That is why we are also proposing that the current prices for sugar be kept for this final year of the production quota regime now in force.
I shall now turn to the individual amendments put forward. Amendment No 4 seeks to leave the monthly increments unchanged. I cannot, to be quite frank, agree to this proposal, because you are wrong to claim that the reduction which we have proposed contravenes the decisions made in Berlin. On the contrary, this is the logical consequence of the decisions made in Berlin! You see, in Berlin it was decided to maintain the system of monthly increments. But that has nothing to do with adjustments to the amounts. In the past, too, we made adjustments– more or less – every year.
On the other hand, I should also like, as it were, to warn you against believing that it would not be sensible to make this adjustment, because you have to bear one thing in mind: if the amounts are not adjusted and this leads to market supply being disrupted and to cereals being held back in the hope of higher carryovers, then farmers will lose more in the spring when they market their products than they would gain through these higher monthly increments. That is why I cannot accept this proposal.
The second issue, which involves updating and tightening up the quality criteria, has, of course, been under discussion for months now. In the meantime, since we are, after all, dealing here with an area where the Commission has exclusive competence – I should also like to emphasise this – a vote has been held in the relevant Management Committee. That actually puts an end to the debate because, as of 19 April, Commission Regulation (EC) No 824/2000 was enacted. I do not think that we should reopen this debate now. That is why I cannot agree to Amendments Nos 2 or 5.
Since the issue of moisture content has been raised here today, I should like to point out that the price of cereals might have been fixed in Berlin, but not the price of water! 14.5% is the maximum moisture content which traders customarily accept nowadays. It does not present a particular problem to farmers. After all, if a farmer does have bad luck and has rather higher moisture levels in his cereal crop, then all he needs to do is to pay the drying costs and the problem is solved! But we can no longer accept the idea of having grain in intervention storage which does not comply with usual international trade practices.
Unfortunately, I also have a problem with including mustard seed in the support system, as you propose in Amendments Nos 1 and 3, because that would be contrary to the Marrakech Agreement. It would run counter to the peace clause which states that no new products may be incorporated into the support system.
I now come to Amendments Nos 6 and 7. Some clarification is probably called for here. Firstly, the funding of foreign policy measures for the 2000/2001 financial year, which is what we are discussing here, is not in any way linked to the setting of sugar prices. Secondly, the proposed reduction in the ceiling under heading 1a for the year 2002 does not prejudice the measures in any particular production sector either."@en1
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