Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-06-03-Speech-2-164"
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Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, as I am rapporteur on two counts, I will begin, if I may, by presenting the report on reform of the common organisation of the market in cereals, which our Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development adopted by a very large majority, and I will then go on to present my second report, on reform of the common organisation of the market in dried fodder, which was also adopted by a very large majority.
Our Committee on Agriculture also considered that the environmental balance in dried fodder could in no way be limited to a vague and unimaginative consideration of fossil fuel consumption. If all economic activities that consume fossil fuels were banned, you would have come to Brussels on foot, Commissioner.
Alfalfa, on the other hand, which accounts for over 80% of the Union’s dried fodder production, has exceptional qualities in two vital fields – soil renewal and savings on phytosanitary products. Moreover, there are no genetically-modified varieties of alfalfa in Europe. This crop, which ensures that fodder derived from it is fully traceable, can therefore replace imports that raise a host of GMO issues.
As to dehydration, the amount of fossil energy used has already been greatly reduced over the past few years. There is still room for improvement, it is true. We therefore propose, in agreement with the sector, that ‘contracts for progress’ be concluded, whereby dehydration units will be able to commit to improving their efficiency, their yield, their energy balance. It seems to us to be more constructive to put schemes in place for this sector with environmental conditions attached than to abolish aid to them completely.
Finally, our Committee felt that the sector was capable of making further agronomic and environmental progress. That is why we are proposing the creation of a research fund financed from a small levy on aids granted to the sector. These seem to us, Mr President, Commissioner, the positive directions that the executive – the Commission – ought to take in order to offer a particularly sensitive and strategic sector quite a different prospect than the destruction, without more ado, of a common organisation of the market, which up until now has managed to preserve one of the Union’s few sources of vegetable protein.
Let us begin, then, with the common organisation of the market in cereals. In its proposed reform, the Commission departs completely from the mid-term review of Agenda 2000, advocating the dismantling of all the vital components of the COM. What are the Commission’s proposals, in fact? First, a reduction, a further reduction I should say, in the intervention price, taking it to a price below the cost of production, an approach that is both uneconomic and unsustainable. Then, the abolition of monthly increments. Then, the abolition of intervention for rye, the abolition of the minimum price for starch potatoes and the abolition of production refunds for starch.
The Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development considered this dismantling of the oldest and most emblematic of the COMs to be neither timely nor justified. On the intervention price, as rapporteur I had proposed that account be taken of inflation, which is 25.5% since the 1992 reform, bringing the effective decline in internal prices for cereals in real terms to 56%. I do not need to remind you that the intervention price for cereals is the earnings index for hundreds of thousands of farmers.
Our committee did not want a further reduction, for which there is no justification, not even the trend in world prices, which the Commission itself believes must rise in the years ahead. The zero price reduction our committee recommends requires no compensation and there is therefore no need for degression.
So far as the monthly increments are concerned, our Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development was anxious to point out that these are intended to cover a real economic and financial cost, namely the cost of storage, including the modernisation of silos and bringing them up to standard, especially in the matter of security, and that their abolition would be equivalent to a further reduction in the intervention price, without compensation. Consistency therefore required that the Commission’s two proposals, concerning the intervention price and the monthly increments, be treated in the same way.
For rye, where there is a real problem of surpluses, we propose cutting the amounts allocated for intervention so that cultivation of this cereal can in future be concentrated in areas where it is the last resort before leaving the land fallow and where there is no profitable alternative.
As to starch and potato starch, Commissioner, we find the Commission’s determination to abolish the schemes that enable European industry to compete against imports on equal terms hard to understand. It is a gift to third-country starch producers, with the European Union receiving nothing in return. The Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development’s proposals therefore differ from the negative measures placed on the table by the Commission, which do not seem to us to give the cereals sector any real prospects of development.
I will turn now, if I may, to the common organisation of the market in dried fodder. For my part, I had never before seen an explanatory memorandum to a Commission proposal based on so weak an argument. Relying in fact on an outdated comment in a Court of Auditors report, the executive – the Commission – intended purely and simply to abolish this common organisation of the market from the 2008-2009 marketing year on the grounds that, and I quote the Court of Auditors report, ‘production relies on the use of fossil fuel for dehydrating and, in some Member States, on the use of irrigation’. How casual and offhand can you be, Commissioner, to threaten the future of an entire industry on such a slender basis? And not just any industry, but one which provides 15% of the fodder protein produced in the Community, an industry of 150 000 producers and 500 000 hectares, an industry whose dehydrating sector consists of 350 fodder processing and packaging units, most of which are farmer-owned cooperatives providing no less than 15 000 jobs. Have you calculated, Commissioner, the amount of public rural development budgets that would have to be mobilised to preserve the rural activity and jobs that would be destroyed by this industry’s euthanasia?
Our Committee on Agriculture therefore had no difficulty in realising that, given the Union’s fodder protein deficit, it would be perfectly irresponsible to abolish aid for dried fodder. If our Parliament adopts the report that its Committee on Agriculture is laying before it, it will be clearly reaffirming the position it previously adopted in the Stevenson report, which called on the Commission to quickly find and put in place the necessary means for reducing this very serious handicap, this strategic dependence, this monstrous vegetable protein deficit, which amounts to more than 75% of our needs. I recall that the Americans, for their part, had no compunction or hesitation, after the Blair House Agreements, about introducing direct aid for soya, and the WTO did not object. So why shouldn’t we do the same?"@en1
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