Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-02-28-Speech-3-083"
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"en.20010228.5.3-083"2
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"Mr President, the BSE crisis shows, among other things, how quickly confidence can evaporate. It will take time to restore confidence. One of the reasons is that BSE is only the latest development. What is also at issue, of course, is the long-distance transportation of livestock and a good deal else which will have to be changed as part of a transformation of the whole of the EU’s common agricultural policy. For all these reasons, far-reaching measures will be required which will have to be effective in the very long term and on several different levels if it is going to be possible to restore confidence.
Overall, I think the Commission’s proposal is a good one. It is dramatic, but it is nonetheless sensible and balanced. Above all, it is necessary. The Commission talks about getting production down and thus avoiding over-production and meat mountains. A transitional period will be required, but this is a justified aspiration and will pave the way for an acceptance of principles oriented more towards the market economy.
The Commission also talks about an overhaul of the common agricultural policy in 2002. I think it ought to be possible to begin this work no later than this year. If the EU is to be competitive, there must first of all be changes to the common agricultural policy, even though that will obviously require a transitional period of a number of years. We cannot go on producing for meat mountains. Instead, producing for consumption is what it is about.
The question is that of whether the Commission’s proposal is enough to restore confidence. It is probably not. That means that more will need to be done. I am less impressed by some of the points in the Commission’s proposal, for example concerning the distribution of costs between the EU and the Member States – at present 70 per cent for the EU and 30 per cent for the Member States. That is a part of the legal basis, but nonetheless something which needs to be changed as soon as possible.
There are at least two reasons why the costs ought instead to be distributed on a 50/50 basis. Firstly, there are budgetary reasons concerned with making it possible to tackle the whole of this operation successfully. More than 40 per cent of the EU’s budgetary resources now already go on agriculture. It is impossible to go beyond that level. Secondly, another form of cost distribution is, in actual fact, only fair. We have for a long time been familiar with the problems and the reasons for these. Nonetheless, different countries have done a great many different things, and those which have invested to avoid this crisis have themselves borne the costs. It is only fair that those who have done little, and perhaps in certain cases nothing at all, should now themselves bear a larger part of those costs which are necessary in order to overcome this crisis."@en1
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