Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-24-Speech-2-058"
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"en.20020924.4.2-058"2
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"Mr President, as we have a bit more time today, I would like to avail myself of the opportunity you mentioned earlier. Here is a Commission proposal, one that has been the subject of wide public discussion in Europe, on how the agricultural policy should be reformed. We are now telling you, Commissioner, which strands of the agricultural policy the Budget Control Committee believes should be changed. Its arguments are well known. The question of the legal basis – about Article 37 or Article 280, as proposed by us – is of course not just an academic one. It is about how public the area of agricultural policy should become. Is Parliament really on board, or is it not? It is about all these things. That is what we want, and we owe it to our citizens.
When I said earlier that our present systems of export refunds cannot be made proof against fraud, you on the Commission ought really to have pricked up your ears, if you are really serious about protecting the tax revenues that we raise in the Member States. No reaction on the part of the Commission reaches my ears – on the contrary. Looking at the preliminary draft budget for the coming year, we find one particularly sensitive area, one I have mentioned before, namely the subsidies for exports of live animals, specifically cattle. On that, I must say that our budget is so lacking in transparency that Parliament first has to coax these export refunds, which do not even have a credit line of their own, out of it! Commissioner, we will try to get one in the 2003 budget year, so that we can get a slightly clearer view of things.
Let us get back to our cattle. I see that the figures for these next year are bigger than those for this year, adding up to a policy precisely contrary to what we actually wanted – down with export refunds, especially where live animals are tormented in the way they were in the past, and where the Commission is not in a position to guarantee the correct implementation of what the directives contain on the subject.
In today's budget, Commissioner, we already have an agreement between the Finance Ministers and Parliament to the effect that the Commission will, by 31 May, present a report on the proper implementation of the Animal Transport Directives in the Member States and the number of sanctions eventually imposed by the Commission on those Member States that may have contravened them. As yet, nothing has been put on the table – nothing! How are we to get to grips with the issue if you simply refuse to do anything? We will bring this issue up again. I would be very happy if we could leave this debate at least with the certainty that we would soon have your institution's report on the table.
To repeat: the policy you are at present pursuing runs directly counter to our own interests. You are increasing export refunds, at any rate for cattle. You cannot, then, shuffle off onto anyone else the responsibility for the unspeakable torments inflicted on the live animals that we are exporting to the Middle East. You yourselves must shoulder that responsibility, and if you think that controls in the Member States are in fact satisfactory on the whole, then I will repeat that last year's irregularities and frauds amounted to EUR 430 million. I do not know how our fellow-citizens of the EU understand your utterances on the subject.
Finally, I was not in Johannesburg, and so I do not know whether you also represented us, but, Commissioner, was it not made clear to us there, all the time, that export refunds of this sort, this kind of agricultural policy, this type of subsidy, ends up making a massive contribution to the great misery to be found in many parts of the world? Oh yes, we will find room in our budget for some sort of aid, for handouts of some kind, but what I have said is a fact, and you are at present engaged in a policy contrary to the interests of these countries and, above all, against those of Europe's taxpayers.
Please do not let these
announcements
be the end of the matter. You may well have had the opportunity today to show your goodwill with a few small steps closer to what Parliament is proposing, but – and not only with regard to transparency – you have failed to do so, preferring to hide yourselves behind this or that paragraph. We, who seek re-election by our fellow-citizens, cannot do that. That is why we have to counter your conception of agricultural policy with our own."@en1
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