Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-02-15-Speech-4-034"
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"en.20010215.2.4-034"2
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"(
Mr President, Commissioner, I would first like to congratulate the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development and the rapporteur on the report presented and the work undertaken. It reveals the anxiety affecting this important sector of European agriculture and, more particularly, significant areas of Greece and Andalusia, the main producer regions.
Cotton is a traditional crop which provides a livelihood for thousands of European families for whom there is hardly any alternative source of income. There is a significant cotton shortfall in the European Union; we can only meet 40% of demand, and it remains the best natural fibre for fabric production, when compared to synthetic fibres. Furthermore, cotton has replaced other intensive crops which generate more pollution and greater surpluses. However, despite the improvements, it is true that there are still environmental problems we need to solve.
Commissioner, we support the Commission’s proposal of maintaining the present system of production aid, based on the compensation payments system. However, we do not believe that imposing stiffer penalties is the right way to restrict expenditure on this sector.
It is simplistic to talk of containing spending and only to present budgetary considerations for reforming the aid system, when what is really happening is that farmers’ incomes are falling whilst we are witnessing an increase in imports from outside the European Union.
This constitutes a structural change, since expenditure has been determined principally by changes to international prices, not by an actual increase in the area of land under cultivation.
Stiffer penalties will doubtless lead to greater concentration of the sector. It will pass into the hands of a few individuals and the viability of family farms will be seriously threatened. However, cotton growing will not cease, which is the intention.
We believe that the producers’ organisations are the best means of improving the effectiveness of the necessary self-regulation measures concerning production and environmental protection.
In conclusion I should like to stress that the Commission must gradually recognise the actual production in these areas. It should adjust guaranteed national quantities, bringing them into line with actual production of cotton, a product we do not produce enough of in the Union."@en1
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"Bautista Ojeda (Verts/ALE )."1
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