Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-12-13-Speech-4-118"
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"en.20011213.8.4-118"2
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"Mr President, honourable Members, ladies and gentlemen. First, may I congratulate you, Mrs Lulling, on being crowned queen bee of the European Parliament here today. I should also like to congratulate you on the report which you have submitted. However I hope, with reference to the sting which was also mentioned, that you do not share the fate of the bee which, as you know, can only sting once. That would be a real pity.
Programmes to improve the conditions under which honey is produced and marketed are regularly submitted by all Member States for approval and, with only 80% of available funds being taken up, the satisfactory application of Regulation 1221/97 would clearly appear to be guaranteed. For the rest, the Council has approved the European Parliament's motion for the funds earmarked for the application of the regulation to be increased by EUR 2.5 million.
The Commission would therefore be delighted if the Member States and the enterprises in question were to take up all these funds in order to implement as many measures as possible within the current legal framework, in order to help the sector and allow it to develop in line with the rapporteur's considerations.
When the report on the first three years' application of this regulation was submitted to the Council, the representatives of the Member States raised no objections whatsoever and approved the Commission's conclusions unanimously. In discussions with the Commission, the enterprises in the sector welcomed the fact that the aid regulation in favour of European beekeeping was to be maintained.
The economy in the honey sector is stable, production and imports have remained steady and the self-supply rate has fluctuated between 48 and 50% for several years and is therefore nothing new. Bearing these facts in mind and bearing in mind the heterogeneity of the sector and the widely differing bee economies in the European Union, we feel that neither a new common organisation of the market in the honey sector nor a direct aid regulation in the form of direct income support for beekeepers is warranted at the present time.
Other suggestions in the report, such as specific aid to improve the bee population through rearing apiaries, can already be implemented under the current regulation, without the need for any new legal provisions. We also have all the facilities of the structural policy and the policy to promote agricultural products at our disposal. They too need to be implemented accordingly, although the initiative here lies mainly with the Member States.
Having said which, the Member States and the enterprises in question need to work more closely together in applying and implementing the programmes in order to ensure there is coherent political and financial support for this sector across the EU."@en1
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