Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-06-Speech-4-044"
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"en.20010906.4.4-044"2
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".
Mr President, we are being asked to discuss directives about breakfast at the end of the morning. It is a little late, but I am still going to attempt it.
With regard to the fourth case, that of milk, there are no proposals for modification. We think that the text proposed to us is quite satisfactory. For jams, I personally reintroduced an amendment that was not accepted by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, but which I hold to. It concerns not accepting the general use of a chemical flavouring in jams and marmalades, that is vanillin. It does not strictly do anything apart from altering the taste.
I would first of all like to point out that this is the second time that we have been consulted on this issue. In the previous legislature, Parliament gave its opinion on the Commission’s proposals on the simplification of vertical directives on sugar, honey, fruit juices, milk and jams. The Council took a great deal of time to finalise the case and finally made significant changes to the Commission’s initial proposals. This is why we are being consulted again today.
I therefore remind you that the idea was to simplify the directives. The point of view of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy is certainly compatible with this objective, but it also consists of not abandoning quality requirements in the name of simplification, and above all not compromising on good consumer information. All the amendments tabled by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, a large proportion of which came from the rapporteur, have this aim.
I would like to point out that the consensus in the Council obviously limits our room for manoeuvre, as we are simply being consulted, that is to say that following our vote today, the Council will, at the end of the day, be completely free to decide. Nevertheless, I think that the amendments succeed in improving the texts from the point of view that I just specified: quality of products and correct consumer information.
I am going to review the various directives in order to give the main elements of them. First of all, on sugars, there is a small problem of definition. The Council, quite rightly, has defined a sugar that is being increasingly used, fructose, but it failed to give a definition of what it calls brown sugar. Parliament’s amendment therefore asks for a definition in the texts. A deadline needs to be imposed, but the Commission needs to propose a definition. That seems elementary.
The second case, that of honey. This is a sensitive case insofar as honey is a high quality product, usually produced on a small scale, with which there have been many marketing problems in previous years, inasmuch as we often see mixtures of honeys and also honeys coming onto the European Union market whose quality is not guaranteed. We therefore need to be vigilant on definitions and labelling. The Commission proposes adding a new category of honey, filtered honey. The Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy proposes that we do not accept this proposal, as filtered honey is in fact a honey whose floral origin cannot be checked. Most of the time it has lost the pollen that allows this to be checked, which prevents the product from being well defined and goes against a guarantee of quality for consumers. We therefore propose that we do not accept this proposal.
With regard to harmful substances that may be found in honey for industry or baker’s honey, we think that it should be forbidden for them to be present in honey. We are of course talking about lower quality honeys, which are used as raw materials in certain preparations in the agricultural and food industry, but there is no question of accepting the presence of harmful substances. There is therefore an amendment from the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy in this respect.
The third case, that of fruit juices. I think that the majority of the amendments are aimed not at making major changes to the proposal from the Commission and the Council, but rather at clarifying the texts and preventing them from going off course. I will explain: we do not feel that a non-exhaustive list of treatments and substances authorised for production, as it is envisaged, is satisfactory. A positive list should be given. We therefore ask the Commission to put forward, within a certain period, a positive list of filtration adjuvants, precipitation agents and absorption adjuvants. A positive list means that substances that are not on the list are forbidden. We think that this is clearer, in the end, and more positive for consumers.
An amendment also asks for fungicides not to be used to preserve fruits to be used to make juices, but for only preservation by chilling to be permitted."@en1
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