Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-02-28-Speech-3-073"
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"en.20010228.5.3-073"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I think that in today's debate on the Commission's supplementary budget, we should distinguish between three separate issues. Firstly, which short-term measures must we adopt in order to restore some measure of stability to the beef market? Secondly, what must we do in the medium term when this House debates the Agriculture Commissioner's 7-point plan? And thirdly, what must we do in the long-term? This House will also debate this issue, in connection with its review of market structures in 2002.
Please, let us keep to this. For now, the immediate task is to adopt measures for the farmers throughout Europe so that the massive fall in beef prices does not put their livelihoods in even greater jeopardy than is already the case. That is the purpose of this supplementary budget, and, please, we should deal with everything else in a calm and sensible way. Let us not delude ourselves: until last autumn, there was a balance between supply and demand in the beef market, and it is important to be honest about that. There are no milk lakes or butter mountains, and, Mrs Rühle, let me make one thing quite clear, it was the government which you support which agreed eighteen months or two years ago to adopt what you now describe as a bad system, namely Agenda 2000. That should be stated clearly for once, and you might like to discuss it at some point within your own party – which includes Mrs Schreyer, the Budget Commissioner, who proposed it, and Mrs Künast, the German Agriculture Minister, who supports it – and yet you act as if you had nothing to do with the whole thing! I cannot let that pass. If anyone is able to put forward any other short-term proposals, they should table them here as proposed amendments today or tomorrow. I am prepared to go along with that, but I have yet to hear any reasonable alternatives, and we have to be honest about it. Mr Graefe zu Baringdorf, that applies to you too, since you belong to this party as well.
We must be honest for once, and if a strategy is pursued which allows the small farmers to go to the wall – which is the message I heard, especially on the German side, from the Agriculture Council on Monday evening – my response is that it is simply not a strategy. When I hear the German Federal Chancellor's recent assertion that it is a question of large versus small, and the German Consumer Affairs Minister's announcement today that large farms also need to be given appropriate support, which is why she does not support any upper limit on the animal premiums, I have to ask: what on earth is going on here?
In the short term, we must take every possible measure to restore stability. The supplementary budget provides the right answers. We must debate the medium and long-term solutions in a calm and reasonable fashion. Ultimately, that is the only way to identify appropriate solutions."@en1
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