Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-06-14-Speech-4-104"
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"en.20010614.4.4-104"2
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"Mr President, I shall begin by welcoming this proposal by the European Commission, which through its timing and content aims at simplifying the procedure for small farmers applying for direct aids under the CAP. In fact the experience we now have of implementing the CAP is that in practice it marginalises small farmers, defined in this proposal as those who have received less than one thousand euro per year on average over the last three years. First, because aids per hectare or per head of livestock made up only a tiny part of the income of these farmers, who often have no more than five or ten hectares of arable land or half a dozen animals. Secondly, because as a rule small farmers have to do the same amount of paperwork as is required for 10, 50 or even 100 times as much aid; sometimes they have to fill out a dozen different forms every year to get a sometimes ridiculous amount of aid. In other words, the small amount of aid for these farmers added to the paperwork involved means that the great majority of small farmers do not feel at all motivated to apply for the aid to which they are entitled.
While this assessment of the proposal being debated is positive in principle, I should like to make three observations: the first is that I think the change approved by the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development to raise the threshold from one thousand to fifteen hundred euro seems reasonable, as it will include potentially a third of the farmers in the European Union and more than two-thirds in some countries, like mine. It is a cautious but realistic start, which I think is both reasonable and important. In addition, the change also approved here to increase the level of aid over the last three years by 20% is important in my view, in part because this level has not yet stabilised following the Agenda 2000 reform, and it is also yet another incentive for small farmers to apply for aid. Certain aids, however, have still been left out, such as those for olive oil, bananas, tobacco, potato starch, etc., and I hope that these too will be included in future.
Secondly, the principle of uncoupling aids from farmers’ productive options has some potential, but it cannot lead to the abandonment of the requirement for a farmer to have some effective production. Otherwise we might be encouraging absenteeism.
My third observation is that in future we will have to consider another scale of aid for small farmers, who should receive a relatively higher rate of aid than large or middle-sized holdings, or else this aid will be ineffective. This is fundamental. Aid to small farms cannot be calculated at the same basic rate as other aids. We will also have to have new bases for allocating aids, since basing them on an average amount received over the last three years excludes those small farmers who grow products that are not eligible for aid, but which from the standpoint of multifunctionality should also be entitled to it, like the others."@en1
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