Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-16-Speech-4-092"
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"en.20001116.5.4-092"2
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".
Yesterday’s debate in this Chamber on mad cow disease and the safety of animal feed displayed, above all, the extreme confusion in regard to the allocation of responsibilities and in people’s minds.
Lesson number three: the Member States must keep a closer eye on the Commission during international negotiations to prevent any further false moves – or should I have said betrayals? – such as the Blair House and Marrakech agreements, which, by cutting down on our vegetable protein products for the benefit of the Americans, drove us to respond by developing the meat-and-bone meal production that lies at the root of our current problems. We believe that, instead of giving the Commission even greater powers in international negotiations, as is currently proposed, the future treaty of Nice should subject the Commission to closer scrutiny by the national governments and parliaments.
Lesson number four: we must radically review the policy of totally abolishing internal border controls, since it encourages trafficking of all kinds and makes health and safety controls more difficult. Similarly, we should temper the dogma of free movement at all costs, which led the Commission to threaten those States that wanted to introduce an embargo on British beef in 1996 and to drag France before the Court of Justice in 1999 for having refused to lift that embargo. Despite all that is happening today, the Commission has the audacity to uphold its complaint, thereby showing the extent to which it regards the free movement of products as the ultimate dogma. If the Member States want to put an end to these aberrations, they will have to take the treaty of Nice as an opportunity to clearly re-establish a national right of protection for reasons of public health.
At present, responsibility is shared between the Community, which has already laid down some partial rules (the ban on feeding meat-and-bone meal to ruminants, rules on the heat/pressure method for producing meal, the compulsory removal of specific ‘at risk material’) and the States, which want to retain their right to enact measures appropriate to their own situation, together with their right to protect themselves and to react rapidly for public health reasons.
The confusion that already exists in this context is exacerbated by a twofold difficulty. First, there is the difficulty of further standardisation with a view to introducing tighter controls, because some countries, such as Germany, do not want to pass on the extra costs to their farmers given that they are hardly affected by this disease. Secondly, and, conversely, there is the difficulty of applying different national rules, for now that border controls have more or less disappeared and labelling does not mention the country of origin, there is a significant risk of eating pork from pigs fed on meat-and-bone meal, even in a country where this is banned.
We have now reached the pinnacle of confusion, as became abundantly clear from yesterday’s statements by the French minister, Mr Patriat, and the European Commissioner, Mr Byrne, who both seem to be completely at a loss.
This situation shows how irresponsibly the unification of the internal market has been pursued in recent years. The first step we need to take is to start again from scratch, to review the labelling rules, to restore certain national controls, to create others and always to set out carefully, and in a clear and practicable manner, minimum European rules, while giving each State the essential right either to go further or to take safeguard measures.
If we do not begin by clarifying responsibilities, rationalising and recognising the overriding right of nations, Europe will merely continue, as today, to play its sad part in watering down these responsibilities.
Turning to the substance of the matter, my group recommended extremely stringent measures to fight this epidemic. But we must not stop there. It is all very well to put out fires, but it would be even better to prevent them breaking out. That is why we want to learn four major lessons which should be borne in mind for the future.
The first lesson is that we must reject production methods that go against nature, that are doomed to lead sooner or later to tragedies of this sort. Perhaps quality farming is a little more expensive, but the apparent savings gained by farming geared to productivity in fact end up as terrible costs for society as a whole. In that respect, we are appalled to see that the Commission is doing all it can to re-authorise GMOs, at a time when we still have no real idea of their effects and they are liable, 10 or 20 years’ hence, to cause new tragedies along the lines of mad cow disease.
Lesson number two: quality farming, which ensures a certain independence in regard to food, cannot survive in Europe in the context of a global free market. Yet at this very moment, after Seattle, we feel that Commissioner Lamy is just itching to start up a new round of international trade negotiations, to include agriculture, with the intention of once again bringing about a fresh alignment with the world market. That is unacceptable."@en1
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