Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-11-15-Speech-4-118"
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"en.20011115.5.4-118"2
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".
I voted for the Katiforis legislative resolution on the proposal for a Council directive amending Directive 92/79/EEC, Directive 92/80/EEC and Directive 95/59/EC as regards the structure and rates of excise duty applied on manufactured tobacco products, which calls upon the Commission to withdraw its proposal for a number of reasons unanimously upheld by the entire Italian section of the Group of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party (Republicans, Democrats and members of the Italy of Values party).
The proposal to revise the current subsidies for tobacco growing would have had a disastrous effect on the economies of entire rural areas which are some of the most disadvantaged in the European Union, as can be seen from a recent European statistical analysis carried out by Eurostat.
The Commission addresses the ‘tobacco issue’ purely from the point of view of health, which is why it attempts to question the provision of Community aid to growers and goes so far as to propose an early revision of the COM in tobacco in order to reduce quotas and cut subsidies
to the sector.
We feel that this opinion errs in that it is too rash, and I am glad to say that it was amended at the Gothenburg Summit. We are convinced that it would be wrong to penalise an agricultural sector which is at the heart of the economy of countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain.
Instead of reducing cigarette consumption, the Commission’s proposal would have created nothing but problems for manufacturers, who would have been forced to change the process of importing supplies from third countries with the result that national productions would have been replaced by lower quality imports.
Lastly, we feel that the position of those who advocate combating smoking by abolishing aid to tobacco growers is ambiguous.
Strangely, in fact, the Member States which do not grow tobacco but which have not banned smoking would receive sums benefiting their Northern European style of agriculture, which is already sufficiently subsidised, and, what is more, they would hypocritically continue to rake in millions of euro in taxes and excise duties on tobacco products and accessories."@en1
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