Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-05-Speech-4-021"
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"en.20010405.2.4-021"2
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"C
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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am going to make this brief because I said what I had to say at the start of the debate. I would like to thank you all very much for your committed contributions but I must also remind you that the task the Commission took on was to investigate the impact the ban on bone and animal meal in feedingstuffs would have on supply and demand. It was not to examine the policy of oilseed production in the European Union. These are two separate issues. We must therefore separate the current additional protein deficit from the situation we already had in the Community. It is a fact that approximately 30 million tonnes of soya and soya equivalents are imported every year. It is not possible to make up for this deficit, at least using currently available options. There is one thing we must not forget: soya beans cannot be planted throughout the Community, but only in regions with a favourable climate. We cannot compensate for this on the basis of a policy of subsidies.
Secondly, I must remind you that the implementation of this policy is subject to the precondition that no distinction is made between promoting protein crops, cereals or other crops. This is simply not possible, unless we offer appropriate compensation. But what argument can we use to persuade the Americans to renounce the Blair House agreement if we have nothing to offer in return? Please tell me what we can offer to make the Americans agree to our introducing a specific subsidy for protein crops to enable us to produce more proteins.
This brings me back to the current protein deficit. The Commission is criticised for looking at things purely from an economic angle. I must ask Parliament whether it is justifiable to pay six times as much in additional subsidies for a kilo of extra soya production than a kilo of soya would cost on the market. There is no way round this issue, as we also have a responsibility to the taxpayer.
By way of conclusion, I would like to point out that the comments I have made here have nothing to do with the report we discussed yesterday evening. Naturally, the Commission will continue to ensure that organic farmers will still be able to plant clover and clover grass and other protein crops on their set-aside land as we proposed. I only mentioned that this morning because clover and clover grass have only been introduced to a limited extent in pigswill and poultry feed and are used primarily in feedingstuffs for ruminants."@en1
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