Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-24-Speech-2-243"
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"en.20001024.7.2-243"2
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"I welcome the opportunity to make a brief contribution to this important debate and to dwell on the importance of the agricultural budget and its relevance not just to farmers but to society in general. Those with an interest in developing a sustainable agricultural sector will be aware that the central thrust of recent reform as agreed in Berlin is a continuing move from commodity support to direct income support for farmers. So it is both a social and an economic measure and it is designed to bring prices into line with world trade, while at the same time attempting to retain the European model based on family farming. A point not always made is that this sizeable budget provision is not just confined to support for farmers but is also a factor in the provision of cheap food for European citizens. In some areas of agricultural activity, such as bee production, EU support represents the profit margin which in effect means consumers enjoy a quality food product at production costs and regretfully, as demonstrated in recent years, sometimes below the cost of production.
In Berlin last year it was agreed that the budgetary provision for agriculture for the period 2000-2006 will be over £506 billion, that the 15 Member States of the European Union will continue to contribute 1.3% of gross national product to the overall annual budget – which of course includes measures to finance the proposed enlargement of the European Union, a proposal which I and my other colleagues fully support. We fully support the concept of enlargement and the provision of sufficient resources to make the applicant states’ transition to membership meaningful. Despite what has been agreed, I sometimes wonder if it is possible to achieve this objective within existing budget constraints without undermining the agricultural budget necessary for a sustainable rural sector in existing Member States. In this regard I believe that we have to act as politicians; we cannot expect to be magicians in a situation where there may not be sufficient funds to develop the economies of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe along the lines that the existing Member States would want to see them developed."@en1
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