Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-23-Speech-4-168"

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". Mr President, allow me to say a few words to respond to the comments that have been made. I note that the choice of speakers means that only Members with reservations concerning these reforms have spoken. I will begin with tobacco. It has already been discussed, and I have some memories of my own from just over 10 years ago in this very House. Given the tensions that could be noted here and there between the agricultural policy and the health policy, one wondered whether we should review our options. So this debate has not come about all of a sudden: it has not just landed in our laps, we have been considering it for years, and you, in Parliament, have been discussing it for years. I believe that the Commission would indeed have been Tartuffe had it not drawn conclusions from these debates that have been held over the years and I believe that we are drawing the conclusions in a very clear manner. In this case, we are proposing a redeployment, a restructuring of this crop towards alternative crops. A clear option is being taken. We know that this will require considerable efforts on the part of a number of tobacco producers today, at both ends of the scale, but we are putting proposals, including financial proposals, on the table that allow this restructuring to take place due to the necessity that we have again discussed over the past years. The same does not apply, however, to olive oil and to cotton, where the aim is not to restructure nor to convert or guide production or producers to other products. We want to maintain a number of cotton crops and many olive groves in the European Union by avoiding the depopulation or desertification of the zones in question, but also by correcting the effects of the current aid systems from the point of view of production, the environment and the finances of the European Union. That is why the Commission has presented an option, somewhere in the middle, that does not take decoupling as far as the measures adopted in Luxembourg this year for other products. It is, in fact, in order to take account of the particular sensitivity of a number of these regions that we have not gone as far as we could have gone in theory, and I can guarantee this, to have participated in the Commission’s discussions on the proposals by our friend Mr Fischler on this subject. My third point relates to the difference in the treatment of sugar. Mrs Rodríguez Ramos, be assured that the reform of the CMO in sugar has begun as we have put forward three options. This is an initial discussion phase that must take place because, it must be said, it is the first time that the substance is being discussed, which is not the case for tobacco, cotton or olive oil. The Commission’s formal proposals will be presented next year, once the debate on the three options has been held with the main parties concerned. Finally, to Mr Jové Peres, who was worried about the impact regarding aid to olive trees depending on the year of planting, I will say that as far as I can tell, this is not a real problem since the maximum guaranteed quantities have already been exceeded, which means that this does not have any impact on the amount of the aid in question."@en1

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