Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-15-Speech-1-076"
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, my particular thanks go firstly to the rapporteur, Mrs Schierhuber, for her comprehensive survey of the situation and her excellent report.
I now come to the second proposal, on the regulation on the common organisation of the market in flax and hemp grown for fibre. Processing aid has to be in reasonable proportion to production costs and take account of the market value of the products.
It is a fact that processing long-flax fibres entails higher costs. A distinction must therefore be drawn between processing aid for long-flax fibres and aid for short-flax fibres and hemp fibre.
Maximum permitted impurity levels also need to be fixed because the aid is intended to promote the production of high-quality fibre and not of the waste entailed in fibre production.
Our policy for the sector has to be unambiguous. We can only accept investment in products which are profitable under market conditions. This principle also applies here. That is why I cannot agree to Amendments Nos 18 and 34, even though they definitely contain further food for thought.
I do agree, however, with the ideas underlying Amendments Nos 23, 25 and 26, that is to bring the aid payable for long and short fibres more closely into line and to make the granting of aid dependent on the result of checks. Nevertheless, the limits given in the budget cannot be exceeded.
The second important subject is the national guaranteed quantities. In view of the well-known difficulties with checking harvest results, these are absolutely indispensable. The Commission proposal mitigates the risk of abuse at the processing stage without quotas having to be set for the individual processing plants, and thus without the disadvantages which quotas of this kind would have on an expanding market.
A maximum guaranteed quantity for the whole Community would not be a solution. Experience shows that this only leads to disputes between Member States and makes it more difficult to find a real solution.
Dividing the maximum guaranteed quantity between the Member States annually, on the basis of processing capacity – which cannot be verified – is not really a practicable alternative. That is why I cannot accept Amendments Nos 20, 21, 27 to 30 and 35. But the idea of introducing a kind of newcomer quota and dividing this each year between those Member States where there is only very little flax and hemp production at the present time, or none at all, is, I believe, definitely worth exploring.
I can accept Amendments Nos 24 and 33 for those instances when the farmer and the primary processor are one and the same person. As far as the import of hemp and hempseed is concerned, I agree that we need a practicable solution. However, I cannot agree to Amendments Nos 22 and 31 in their current form because they implicitly say that no further controls need to be carried out.
Turning, in conclusion, to the timetable, I am also prepared to accept Amendments Nos 17 and 36, in accordance with which the new rules would only enter into force on 1 July 2001. But this would mean that the aid per hectare for the next marketing year would have to be set this year in accordance with the system currently in force. In this case, I would be bound by the figures in the 2001 budget.
The debate on reforms in the sphere of flax and hemp grown for fibre has been going on now for almost five years, if you take 1996 and the proposals which the Commission made then as the starting point. In place of the reform proposed by the Commission at that time, however, the Council simply stepped up controls. This certainly increased administrative expenditure considerably, but largely failed to achieve the desired, and necessary, effect: subsidy-hunting continued and the area under cultivation increased from around 100 000 hectares to 240 000 hectares, with the result that budgetary expenditure on this sector was, virtually, more than doubled.
A reform of this sector is absolutely essential! I think that you agree with me on this. We need to make the fibre flax and hemp sector more market-oriented so that it is able to make an effective, indisputable and useful contribution to the economy and is no longer the target of public criticism.
Under these circumstances, I would have thought that you would have attached great importance to adopting the resolution this week, so that the Council can also take a decision as soon as possible. In this way we can avoid the market disruption which would ensue in the 2000/2001 financial year if the level of the aid was not settled by 1 August.
For all that – as I have told you – I can accept 13 of the amendments and, as regards many of the others as well, I have specifically emphasised that, although I cannot accept them as they stand at the moment, some of them definitely provide further food for thought and material for debates which I will initiate in the Council.
However, because the market really will be severely disrupted if we do not have a scheme in place in time, we would either have to adopt temporary preventive measures – which would have to take account of the initial budget estimates for 2001 – or we will have a harvest where the producers will not know what payments they can expect to receive. We really should not allow this kind of situation to develop. It would be simply unthinkable to have to explain to the producers and also the processors why they should have to suffer because we cannot manage to decide on a proposal which, after all, has already been on the table in this House for eight months.
The proposal before you today has three main objectives. It is intended to put a stop to subsidy-hunting once and for all. The Commission wishes to foster rural development by supporting traditional cultivation and production methods, and it wants to help farmers over a limited period of time to find profitable new sales outlets and to increase their sales potential. You see we are not under any illusions! In the light of budgetary constraints – with which everyone is familiar – the sector has to be more market-oriented. An even more important point is that, following the Berlin decisions, no new money is envisaged for the promotion of new products. Such new products may be perfectly interesting for agriculture, but our message must be honest here: the overriding objective with innovations of this kind has to be profitability.
The Commission has carefully examined Parliament’s amendments. Many of them are acceptable to us, at least in essence; others are not acceptable in their current form but prompt further reflection. Then there are others which, I am afraid, we cannot accept.
I now turn to the first proposal on including flax and hemp grown for fibre in the arable crops regulation. I am prepared to accept Amendment No 2, which concerns the formulation of the objectives, and Amendment No 1, at least in spirit. The idea of doubling aid per hectare when proof is provided that the straw has been processed into fibres seems, at first sight, to be very tempting, Mr Graefe zu Baringdorf. However, in my opinion, it is doomed to failure. This is because, by introducing it, we would de facto be creating first and foremost fresh incentives for renewed subsidy-hunting, and ultimately we would again have to rely on controls which have hitherto already proved to be insufficiently effective.
Consequently, I do not agree with Amendments Nos 3, 9, 10 and 12 nor, for similar reasons, with Amendment No 38. In Amendment No 4, however, fears about the rules on land eligibility are expressed which were addressed in particular by Messrs Adam and Wyn. I agree with them that we need a sensible solution here, and that is why I can agree in principle to Amendment No 4. The same goes for Amendment No 37 which is along the same lines.
Amendments Nos 7, 8 and 15, regarding derogations from the provisions for arable crops in respect of surface area and set-aside, are acceptable to the extent that they are in line with the agreement on Agenda 2000, but only within this framework. In my opinion, they are actually no longer necessary because there is land all over the place within the surface area on which flax and hemp can be grown without limiting the amount of other crops that are cultivated. Nevertheless, problems could arise in some areas. We will try to find a solution here, so as to reduce the possible constraints which might arise.
I can accept Amendment No 6 on hemp. However, irregular plots cannot simply stop being subject to checks altogether, as is recommended, at least implicitly, in Amendments Nos 5 and 16 and I cannot therefore agree to these amendments.
There could be room for a certain amount of flexibility, however, where it is a question of achieving high control levels. That is why I can state my agreement with these amendments and with Amendment No 14 at least in this respect. It is because of the risks for the image of hemp that the Commission is proposing a ban on hemp and hempseed being used in food, despite the fact that the varieties which have to be used in Europe do not contain any psychotropic substances. This is a highly political issue which we can certainly discuss further. However, at the present time, I do not wish to agree to Amendments Nos 11, 13 and 32. But the actual objective is clear."@en1
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