Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-14-Speech-2-306"
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, first, I should like to thank you, Mr Garot, as rapporteur, for your excellent report on the introduction of a compensation fund in the common organisation or the market in pigmeat. The crises in the pig sector which, thank God, we have since overcome, were in fact what prompted the Commission proposal in the first place. Luckily we are currently in the buoyant phase of the pig cycle, meaning that supply has fallen and farmers are commanding much better prices. Farmgate prices have been hovering around EUR 140-150 per 100 kilos for several months and experts continue to see a positive outlook. It is clear from market developments that, as ever, the pig cycle is exerting its influence and still applies and that good times will again follow bad. We must not overlook this fact during our debate of today's proposal.
As far as adjusting aid on the basis of the number of animals is concerned, may I point out that the Commission proposal already makes provision for a legal basis for just such a procedure.
Before I finish, I should like to touch on a question addressed mainly in proposed Amendment No 6, namely improving statistics on herd trends and the possibility of forecasting production trends. I really do not think that a new law or new provisions are needed here. What is needed is proper, comprehensive application of current provisions by the Member States and their statistics offices. My services have drawn the outstanding problems to the attention of their Eurostat colleagues responsible for inventories and have pushed for results to be improved here. We have discussed this on several occasions over recent months and it is clear from our discussions that we have no shortage of provisions; what we are short of is people who take the provisions seriously, carry out the inventories of pig herds correctly and answer the questions put to the Member States truthfully.
You will have understood from what I have said that I am unable to accept your proposed amendments. However, I thank you for the serious debate which we have had here and I hope that we shall be able to reach a result on the basis of the Commission proposal, because the problem here – and I make no bones about it – is that the Member States still have very differing views on this matter.
What we are discussing is an instrument to support farmers' incomes in times of crisis. We are not discussing a new common organisation of the market in pigmeat. We have a common organisation of the market in pigmeat and we should not make the mistake of questioning the present common organisation of the market in pigmeat which, basically, works.
I should like, in examining the amendments proposed in the report, to concentrate on the points which clearly differ from the Commission proposal. The first is co-financing. Without doubt, this is, to an extent, the key question in the debate on this proposal and it is addressed in proposed Amendments Nos 11 and 12. I should stress here that the main responsibility for a balanced market and for the resultant price levels lies in the hands of the pigfarmers themselves. It is they, the pigfarmers, who decide on production volumes and, hence, indirectly and automatically on future price developments. I think it would therefore be wrong to deny farmers their responsibility. Apart from that, co-financing carries the risk of distorting the market's signals to the farmers. I cannot therefore support the idea of putting all the market's eggs in an anti-cyclical price policy basket. If we start an anti-cyclical price policy, then all we are doing is jacking up the pig cycle.
One thing I have learned today is that there appear to be members who support the idea of introducing co-financing in all common organisations of the market. In other words, if we do it everywhere else, we will probably include the pigmeat market. But that is not the subject of the debate, at least not as far as I am aware.
The second important question is the voluntary basis for the system. The Commission proposal gives Member States the choice of whether or not they wish to set up a fund, whereas the proposed amendment makes it compulsory for all Member States. But we must not forget that European pigfarming varies and is organised differently from one country to another and that cooperation between the individual stages of the production chain is organised very differently. As a result, there is a whole series of Member States, and of pigfarmers in those Member States, who will brook no discussion of a compensation fund because they say that they do not need it because they have other arrangements for coping with recessions in their income cycle.
Other countries are determined to have a compensation fund and I will tell you quite frankly that, if we were to propose a mandatory compensation fund, we might as well forget the whole idea, because it would never obtain a majority in the Council.
Then there is the question of including specialist breeders in the proposed system, as stated in proposed Amendments Nos 7 and 13. I think this is asking for trouble because a) breeding is a very varied operation and b) support for breeders will not necessarily automatically fall in the same phase of the cycle as support for fatteners. Plus, the weight of piglets various enormously, from 8 to 30 kg, and there is, as it were, no uniform price quotation system for standard piglets, meaning that there is no basis on which to support them. I think it is far better here to establish an economic balance between the price of piglets and the price of slaughter pigs through the market rather than through artificial measures. More importantly, we must not forget that in numerous countries farmers fatten their piglets themselves and hence have direct access to the compensation fund via the fattened pigs which they sell.
The Commission cannot accept proposed Amendment No 16 because this amendment would interfere drastically with the freedom of decision of farmers who decide not to participate in the fund, in order to retain their freedom. Plus, the measures have not been defined, meaning that the decision on the measures to be applied basically stays in the hands of the Member States. That would be genuine renationalisation and I cannot agree to it.
The planned reduction in production for each Member State depending on previous production sounds suspiciously like a quota regulation. Plus, it would generate huge bureaucratic costs, including for the purpose of controls. The Commission feels that it is only fair to subject farmers who participate in the fund to some sort of discipline, because they receive a certain income guarantee in return, whereas others, who do not participate, have no such guarantee. In addition to these four core questions which the debate on the report has thrown up, there is a series of other, less fundamental proposed amendments, most of which deal with the details of the regulation – details which, in my view, should be included not in the Council regulation but in the implementing measures."@en1
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