Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-01-Speech-1-061"
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"en.20030901.5.1-061"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank Commissioner Barnier, who has addressed the tragic events of this summer with his usual clarity and illustrated what the Commission is doing with his customary great skill.
There is just one point which leaves me somewhat perplexed: I find it difficult to make a distinction between the drought and the fires, particularly when it comes to the environmental and economic consequences. If there is a distinction, it is at the level of the causes, for I am afraid that many of the fires were caused by man’s folly, by a pyromaniac, while it would be extremely difficult to blame anyone for the drought.
Commissioner, I would now, if I may, like to look at what has been an absolutely dreadful summer for Europe from a farming perspective because, in my view, the scale of the problem is truly huge. The drought of recent months is yet another indication of how the indisputable change in the earth’s climate is having irreparable effects on the environment and on our farming in particular. I am afraid that extremes have become the norm: drought, rain, cyclones and floods are the effects of a process of desertification which I am sad to say is affecting Europe, in particular southern and eastern Europe, and, ultimately, taking a very heavy toll on farming, for these disasters are generating an economic crisis, opening up a bottomless pit of production costs and sharply reducing the market margins for farm produce, in such a way as to jeopardise, in a summer such as this, even the pursuit of entrepreneurial activity in large areas of Europe.
I am not trying to paint a picture which is all black: I am merely describing a situation and I would like to identify ways of assisting and supporting farming. In this case, it is important that, generally speaking, the Commission carries out a careful assessment and adopts practical instruments to analyse and address the quantity and quality of European water resources for the coming decades, with particular focus on ways of conserving them.
Then there are the immediate requirements. I feel that, although the scale of the damage caused by the drought, which will become clear when the growing and harvesting operations are over, could or will lead to the activation of the European Solidarity Fund, at the same time, it would be essential to be able to take advantage, as at other times of declared crisis, of the option of bringing forward the payment of Community premiums to farmers. In this sense, it might be useful to set up a European summit coordinating all the parties affected by disasters, which is necessary to support measures to improve the situation, particularly the state of the farming economy.
Not immediately but soon, a damage estimate, which may be difficult to carry out but should certainly be close to the threshold for benefiting from the solidarity instruments I mentioned just now, could call for careful reflection from the Commission and a Commission proposal to achieve a multi-risk reform tailored to respond to the new climatic conditions of our continent. This would certainly be a very useful, wholly innovative instrument to support our farming."@en1
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