Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-03-10-Speech-4-016"
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"en.20050310.3.4-016"2
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".
Mr President, the Commissioner spoke of the need for reform, and I agree with her; the common market organisation for sugar has itself been corrupted by the sugar industry, which was geared to consumption plus privileged access for sugar from the ACP countries. A situation then developed in which C sugar, too, was, in effect, dumped on the global market, and in which the quantity of sugar arriving from the ACP countries was re-exported, which cost the budget another EUR 1.5 billion.
You say, though, that you want to cut the quantity by 1.8 million tonnes. If we include the C sugar, the cut will have to be by between 4 and 5 million tonnes, which will end up on the global market. It follows that you must reduce quantity rather than price. We can accept a reduction in price, but, if you are proposing 33% without allocating a quota to the least-developed countries – something that does not go against the rules that we have, but simply prevents them from becoming transit countries – then this 33% is not enough, for, even under these conditions, the multinationals will use these countries as transit routes through which to dump their sugar back in the European Union. It follows that you will have to cut the price again to make that less appealing, so it would be better if you were to describe this as liberalisation, without beating about the bush.
If you want to maintain a market organisation, you have to get to grips with what matters – the quantities rather than the prices. I am strongly opposed to bonuses being paid for the reduction in quantity that I regard as perversion and for which the sugar industry itself bears responsibility. It makes no sense, and does not benefit the farmers, for these 1.3 or 1.5 billion to be paid out as bonuses – they are swallowed up and do not benefit the farms. Instead, what matters is that the sugar business should be arranged in such a way that the cultivation of sugar makes money. That does not happen with C sugar, and that is why C sugar must no longer be allowed on the global market. Farmers can do with it whatever they like – anything, that is, other than dumping it on the global market. That is something we have to lay down, and what we have to do with the EUR 1.3 billion that are not going to be used as a bonus is to put them in a fund for the development of the rural economy and for diversification in the least-developed countries and in the ACP countries, in order to enable their economies to develop. Nor does it make any sense whatsoever to compensate these countries, for if they are compensated for no longer making any money out of sugar, from what are they meant to fund their economic development? We put money into these countries, and we have to put it to work – not by paying it as compensation, but by initiating economic development, by making them dependent on things other than sugar, enabling them to earn money by supplying sugar to the European Union with the preferences and quotas that they have, whilst at the same time enabling them to provide for themselves and promoting rural development in the artisanal and technical spheres. It would be a forward-looking strategy if we were to use the market organisation for sugar as a means to come up with a development strategy and to consider the fundamentals of the shape global trade should take. Liberalising tendencies are present in all our political groups; that much is apparent from the amendments, including those from my own group, and you, Commissioner Fischer Boel, are – perhaps without even wanting to – making concessions to those tendencies by having to take the next step in five years’ time, when you will, in essence, be doing away with the organisation of the markets in sugar."@en1
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