Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-11-Speech-2-235"
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"en.20030311.9.2-235"2
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".
Mr President, Mrs Redondo Jiménez states that I did not mention various points, but I could just as easily reply that she did not ask me about them either. In your question, Mrs Redondo Jiménez, you did not ask for example what is going to happen to the rice regime or what the situation is with food safety for imports. What is more, this is not even a subject for which I am responsible.
I would however like to comment briefly on what you said. Firstly then, why do we need a rice reform? We do not need it because of imports of basmati rice, which are I might add very limited, something which incidentally greatly annoys the Indians, who are therefore constantly trying to have their export quota to the European Union increased. We need it as a result of the decision – which by the way was also made here in Parliament – to give the world's poorest countries the right to export all of the goods that they produce, without any restrictions, to the European Union.
Of course the world's poorest countries include a whole series of rice producers. That is why our current rice regime will no longer work in the future and why we need to change it. The objective of the reform has to be on the one hand to address the consequences of this external trade policy and on the other to ensure that at the same time the typical landscapes are preserved in traditional rice-growing areas, such as in southern Spain, where there is of course even a national park where rice is the main crop.
I turn now to the question of import controls. This may not be what you want to hear, Mrs Redondo Jiménez, but products that are imported through Spanish ports or via any other border post in Spain by train or lorry have to be checked at the border to ascertain whether they meet plant health and veterinary requirements. All that the European authorities, for example the Veterinary Office in Dublin, can do is to introduce a control plan to check that the border inspections are actually working. This is, however, as I said, the responsibility of my fellow-Commissioner Mr Byrne."@en1
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