Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-10-Speech-2-052"
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"en.20040210.3.2-052"2
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"Mr President, underlying the whole report is the fundamental idea that people in the European Community – and in all its regions, widely divergent in their structure though they are – have a job and hence an entitlement to an income commensurate with what they produce. If I am right in my understanding of what the rapporteur said, then it is only if that is the case that one can talk of there being such a thing as social European Union. The report rightly points out that yields vary widely across the European Union, even though Europe’s climate and other natural conditions are favourable to almost all crops.
The principal causes of the changes in costs over recent years are well-known. My expectation of future reforms is that the Commission will take more account of their ability to influence the cost structure. I also expect openings to be created for more investments, and I hope that a greater diversity of programmes will result in simplification and clarity of vision.
As in other reports, reference is made to the fact that direct payments to farmers, being factored in as sources of income, cannot simply be cut out without the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, and I believe, with regret, that there are those who want that to happen.
More and more people in Europe’s rural areas are doing more than one job, and so every euro that is not spent on structural planning and development in rural areas – I am talking in terms of billions – is always associated with the loss of income and jobs. This makes it important to assess whether the work and the way the European agricultural model is applied tend towards appropriate rewards for European farmers, and what is meant by that. About this, the rapporteur is rather reticent, the reason being that there is a lack of data. My expectation, though, is that, as the market organisation develops further, we will be able to answer the question of what an appropriate income for farmers actually is.
In Germany, farmers’ incomes have dropped dramatically, by 6.1% and 19.8% in the last two financial years. That amounts to an overall economic crash. This bleak state of affairs has come about for two reasons; one is flooding and drought, but – as has already been said in this debate – it has far more to do with the price war in food retailing, in which farmers are generally on the losing side.
How are the location of production, and hence employment and income, affected by the decoupling of payments and their being linked to environmental requirements – an attempt at riding two horses, in giving the market a greater role in determining farmers’ incomes while rewarding with public funds services that are no longer in demand? Will it ensure extensive agricultural land use? Far from it; it is far more to be feared that it will lead to the onset of predatory competition and that we will be facing structural changes that will leave local areas worse off. That is something I do not want."@en1
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