Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-07-03-Speech-3-163"
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". – Mr President, I appreciate the remarks from the Presidency, and Members' contributions. Some have focused on the issue itself and others on the relationship between the dramatic increase in population and the number of people still lacking food. These are two complementary problems, which remind me of the dramatic vote in this House earlier today on sexual and reproductive health and rights. These matters have a lot to do with each other and certainly it is almost impossible to fight hunger meaningfully without also addressing the issue of population policy.
Mrs Sauquillo Pérez del Arco, characterising Johannesburg as the last chance after Doha and Monterrey is a way of putting it with which I do not want to be identified. It makes it look as if Doha and Monterrey were both failures. This is not the case. In the European Union we can be pleased that due to our insistence and energetic input we have a Doha development agenda. Without the EU's insistence on this, it would not be so. Without the Barcelona decision leading up to Monterrey, we would not have come up with a real input. Without a real European input we would not have had the kind of American decision we saw.
We are not moving forward empty-handed. Rome was an occasion to re-establish the importance of the food issue in general. For that reason it was meaningful, even in its timing. But the next step is Johannesburg.
I agree with Mr Haarder on the difficulties in the run-up to Johannesburg. We will have to work very hard during the weeks and months until then.
Mr Belder asked about the new anti-hunger programme introduced by the FAO Secretary-General, Mr Diouf. The price tag of this programme, which was introduced only a few days before the summit, is USD 24 billion in additional public funds. The price tag is high. This was purely a secretariat initiative, not undertaken at the request of the members and not previously discussed with them. A lot of work needs to be done in order to support and justify this initiative.
It should also be recalled that another recently adopted joint FAO/NEPAD comprehensive agricultural programme for Africa calls for the investment of an additional USD 240 billion between now and 2015. So we are definitely not running short of magnificent initiatives involving billions and billions of new additional money coming from the secretariat of the FAO. Most of this money, however, is coming from the secretariat without any sort of real discussion and coordination with the donors or the membership in general. This is one of the reasons why we have not found it very easy to relate constructively to everything we have been presented with in this regard.
All this should not be misunderstood as reflecting a negative attitude. We are working with the FAO; we are carrying out a number of good projects in Africa; we are funding it through our regional envelope when our partners in Africa ask us to act hand-in-hand with the FAO in areas where it has real expertise. Some things do work.
I have tried to clarify this issue. I warn against the temptation of thinking that no progress is being made at all. What we need is a combined effort made up of population policy, broad-based sustainable development, fighting poverty, and stopping the wars and conflicts that are still the main cause of the starvation of millions of people. It is a man-made and political issue. That has to be kept in mind.
Another important aspect which I have been focusing on more and more is the direct relationship between conflicts and hunger. Tanzania for as long as people can remember, has been host to more than half a million refugees in camps. They all have to be fed. They all add to the number of people we have to do something about to help them survive. Things could be different. The hungry people who are the casualties of conflict are a man-made disaster. Optimists would look at this as something we could change. But it is not only a matter of increasing agricultural production, it is also a matter of creating peace and a minimum of decency and governance.
Several speakers have commented on the absence of leaders of our Member States, but President Prodi and I were there for the Commission and we did our part. Many others have focused on the relations between our agricultural policy in Europe and trade issues: Mr van den Berg, Mr van den Bos, Mrs Sandbæk and others.
I would like to point out that we need to avoid the overdoses of Euro-masochism which we often hear when we talk about these matters. To Mrs Sandbæk, I would like to say that even if it is Oxfam that comes up with these figures, characterising the EU as being the most protectionist bloc on this issue, the reality is still that we, in Europe, import more foodstuffs and more agricultural products from the third world than the combined imports of the United States, Japan, Canada and the other OECD countries outside the EU. This is still the reality. So there is a limit to how masochistic we should be.
It is true that subsidies are a big problem. This is very clear today and it will be a main topic of the discussions in Johannesburg. The figures are overwhelming. The OECD countries spend USD 350 billion a year on subsidies compared to USD 50 billion a year for development cooperation purposes.
Fortunately, our internal analysis in Europe corresponds to and goes in the same direction as the global pressure in regard to what we ought to do. In both cases the heading is 'reform and reduction of subsidies'. We hope to move forward on this.
Mr Van den Bos said there is too much monoculture and too little food security. I agree. One case in point is Ethiopia, which we have discussed again and again over the years. It is the biggest case of old-fashioned traditional food aid – shipping in wheat which is good for the farmers of Wisconsin and elsewhere but not good for the survivability and sustainability of people in Ethiopia.
We are now agreeing a new approach with the Government of Ethiopia and even with the United States. This year we held seminars with the government, at which the Prime Minister was also present, to define a new food security approach, very different from the old food aid approach. This is exactly what I told Parliament – that we would like to see this change. It is coming. It is an approach I saw too little of in Mr Diouf's presentation of the agenda of the FAO. It is one cause of the frictions in our discussions with the FAO.
Mr Ó Neachtain, I send my warm regards to your close friends and constituents."@en1
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