Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-02-28-Speech-3-069"
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"en.20010228.5.3-069"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, Representatives of the Council, all we are debating is an Amending Budget, but look at the wealth of strategic issues it raises. First and foremost, there is a gulf between the Commission’s own diagnosis of the anticipated cost of the BSE crisis and the funding plan before us.
I should like to repeat Mr Fischler’s point of view, as published in
one month ago to the day, which said that the costs of this crisis will be huge, even in the best case scenario where consumption would not fall more than 10% in 2001 and where our exports would be maintained. Intervention buying alone would have a budgetary cost of EUR 3 billion. One month later, consumption has fallen by 27% and exports have halved. Yet we have been proposed a budget of a little less than EUR 1 billion, or a third of the estimated minimum costs. This budget deficit gives a spectacular insight into the major political deadlocks that are provoked by a steadfast and increasingly intolerable refusal by the majority of the Fifteen and the Commission alike to consider even the slightest change to the Financial Perspective, even if this would lessen the effects of such a serious, unexpected crisis.
In the medium term, my group is certainly in favour of far-reaching reform of the common agricultural policy, a reform that would put an end to spending all the budget on illegitimate funding of agribusiness which centres on high productivity and is dangerous to human health and to the environment. We want to see a CAP that no longer sends millions of animals to the incinerator; instead, we want a CAP that reserves its funds for real farmers, paying them a decent price for their products to enable them to practice long-term farming, sustainable development and safe, healthy livestock feeding.
Quite the opposite is what we have today where small and medium size producers are in deep trouble and are being well and truly lynched. They are victims of a pernicious agricultural policy that was pretty much foisted upon them. We do not believe in making things worse in order to further our own ends. We shall therefore vote in favour of this budget as an emergency measure. We cannot, however, leave it at that. The European Union must see its responsibilities through to the end. On this issue, I shall voice my opposition to the idea of renationalising the CAP or, to put it more accurately, renationalising the funding of the CAP, as one amendment is underhandedly seeking to do, which would be tantamount to disintegrating the Community.
Incidentally, I would like to ask the majority of this House, which is dedicated to boosting the quality of European integration, if they can imagine what an enormous impact the talks on the future European Federation and on the unification of the great European family would have if, all at once, the oldest common policy were smashed to pieces, if the cardinal principle of solidarity crumbled at the very hands of the Fifteen and if, in the face of a major crisis, there was a return to the principle of every man for himself? I believe that such issues are certainly worth several EUR billion."@en1
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