Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-05-25-Speech-3-209"
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".
Madam President, the Commissioner has presented us with a legacy that was passed on by his predecessor and it is to his credit that he is showing some enthusiasm in defending it. After all, it is the consumer who is central in this proposal, and that is important too. It is important that the consumer knows that claims about health, nutritional values or food cannot be untrue or misleading. That is what this proposal brings across and that is what the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe wholehearted supports.
Conversely, it is of course the case that those claims that are scientifically proven – those that are true – are useful to consumers. I do not want to talk about those in terms of advertising, for that, being profit
driven, has a nasty ring to it, but that too is important for consumers. Consumers want to be able to make a choice, and that choice has to be offered to them. It must be possible, though, to provide scientific proof. This is something we should not just accept reluctantly, but, I think, should welcome as enhancing the consumers’ freedom of choice and promoting innovation, and that too is of importance.
I am aware of there being a grey area around what should be done about those health claims about products that are, in fact, intrinsically unhealthy. As far as I am concerned, I would say that this falls within the scope of misconception, and Article 7 already provides for safeguards against this; we are not entirely convinced that we need European nutrient profiles for this. Nutrient profiles can be very useful. I know that Member States use them. They may work nationally, but whether they work at European level is something of which the Commission has not yet managed to convince us.
At the moment, I am campaigning in favour of the Constitutional Treaty in the Netherlands. I do not know if Mrs Corbey is doing the same – obviously not – but if I were to tell people in my country not to worry, for Brussels would soon tell them what they can and cannot eat, then this Treaty would be voted down completely. That is really not the message we can send out on the basis of arguments we have heard so far. I therefore want more specific arguments. The majority of our group will not be voting for the deletion of Article 4, but we do think that the Commission should present better arguments, and our Amendment 107 contains a request to that effect.
Finally, and – as I notice that my time is up – very briefly, since we are for reducing bureaucracy to a minimum, we have opted in favour of the notification procedure which we think offers sufficient guarantees for consumers and entails less mothering. On a final note, I agree that obesity must be discussed and tackled, but not in the context of this directive but much more in relation to the food labelling directive which we would have liked to have seen tabled by now. When you present it to us, Commissioner, then I think it will be much easier to talk about obesity as a problem."@en1
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