Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-09-Speech-2-386"
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"en.20040309.14.2-386"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner Fischler, the proposal for the reform of the COM in tobacco presented by the European Commission is based on a mistaken assumption. The Commission intends to make the total abolition of public aid to European tobacco producers a key element in the anti-smoking campaign. The link would, perhaps, deserve to be examined if Europe completely dominated the market and produced 95% of world tobacco, but that is far from being the case: Europe produces only 5% of world tobacco and its production covers less than 30% of its needs.
Furthermore, as the FAO – which specialises in the subject – has emphasised, a public policy that seeks to reduce excessive consumption of tobacco must focus on behaviour rather than on the product, on demand rather than on supply. Advisedly, it must inform and prohibit. Let me quote our rapporteur, though: if ‘smoking and also the production and sale of products derived from tobacco growing continue to be legal, it is obvious that the only outcome of the Commission proposal will be that the tobacco-product industries will seek their supplies from outside the EU’. It follows that undertaking, as the Commission is doing, to make European production disappear at a time when the European consumer market remains a very important and growing one, is like offering the whole of this market on a plate to our competitors, to non-European tobacco producers. That is what Brazil, where production is exploding, is waiting for.
Nevertheless, the tobacco-product industries stress the essential role played by the types of tobacco cultivated in Europe in their blends. European producers specialise primarily in varieties that are fairly neutral in terms of aroma, but with a very low level of alkaloid. I am thinking, for example, about Virginie de Vendée from Poitou-Charentes, in the Loire Atlantique. It is tobacco cultivated in Europe that allows European cigarette manufacturers to comply with the ever more stringent health regulations that we impose on them in terms of nicotine or tar level. If we deprive them of this perfectly planned source, where will our manufacturers go to stock up? To South-East Asia? What would be the benefit in terms of public health? Let us take care to ensure that the disappearance of production does not entail, in this sector as in many others, delocalisation and transformation. Already, Altadis is closing sites in France and is setting up in Morocco. Is this the evolution that the Commission wants to become the rule?
The Commission has not taken into consideration the socio-economic impact or the consequences for land-use planning of the measures that it proposes. It is a case, however, of very localised production, in often sensitive regions where it is not always possible to replace production. It is an activity that creates several jobs, permanent and seasonal. Now, the reform as it has been proposed can only end in the complete abandon of the tobacco growing in all production areas and therefore leads to unemployment there.
We must reject this reform and reject its logic, that of pure, simple and discriminatory eradication of production, of Community tobacco production, and we must reject its ideological, moralistic and simplistic inspiration. The counter-proposal by our Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development is undeniably better. Certainly, it is part of the logic of the decoupling that the Commission wants, but it strives to limit the maximum size and the negative effects. Recoupling aid up to 70% of current support will not make it possible to avoid a drop in production, but it will restrict the extent of it. The farmer is free both to continue production – which the Commission proposal did not allow – and to think about restructuring without endangering the balance of his farm. Foresight is given to tobacco planters, the proposal from the Committee on Agriculture is within the budgetary framework of the entire CAP as has been set until 2013. The illusory reference to the second pillar proposed by the Commission has clearly and fortunately been rejected. The system using quantity of production that led to producers being treated differently and overly complicated the system has been wisely abandoned.
Maximum recoupling, major subsidiarity left to Member States to apply the regulation according to the situation in individual countries and reliance on groups of producers, is a real alternative, that the Committee on Agriculture is proposing in order to maintain cultivation in Europe whilst the consumer market is there. It is the right direction and we support it."@en1
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