Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-02-28-Speech-3-087"
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"en.20010228.5.3-087"2
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"Mr President, I support the supplementary budget and recognise the need for it. I support the idea of the 70/30 ratio, as we have had in the past. I want to point out that there are people in this Parliament who think that, because we reduce the European budget and force the Member States to take up the cost, we are saving the European taxpayers from something. Nothing could be further from the truth. The question is whether the money is paid through the European Union or through the national governments. In any case, the crisis is here and it will cost the European taxpayers. It is not the appropriate strategy for the Members of this House to recommend that we should pass our responsibilities on to the national governments.
I would also like to underline the fact again that in this European Union we seem to think, when we introduce a supplementary budget of this size, that it is a major burden on the taxpayers of Europe. It is actually a relatively small amount. The budget of the European Union is a little over 1%. Now the Member States which fight hardest and most vociferously against increasing that budget are the ones that take 47-50% and spend it themselves. So the European Union takes 1%, of which in the past, agriculture took 80%. Today agriculture takes about 40%, so as a percentage of GNP the budget of the European Union takes a lot less from the European tax-payers than it did 15 to 20 years ago.
The other point I should like to make is that so many people, by connecting these outbreaks of disease with the common agricultural policy, tend to somehow blame the CAP for the problem. The truth is that the European consumer never had cheaper food and never had safer food. The evidence for that is in the longevity and the health of people. Even in the poorest regions of this Union and in the poorest cities and towns we do not see hungry children any more because this Union has guaranteed and supplied cheap food of a high quality. We should remember that.
So what are the solutions to the problem? I would have preferred to hear the Commissioner plan for what consumption will be for the next three or four years and take immediate measures to reduce production. I do not agree with my Irish colleague, Mr Hyland, that it is in anybody’s interest to produce something for destruction."@en1
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