Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-07-Speech-2-216"
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"en.20050607.25.2-216"2
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"Mr President, my government says that the British budget rebate is defensible, and it is! On the same basis, net contributors like Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands, should also have a rebate. But over the next few years the British rebate will increase markedly in size and the poorest Member States will have to contribute towards it. That is not defensible.
My government says that the rebate is non-negotiable. This is nonsense. The European Union is a giant machine for negotiating agreements between 25 countries and everything relevant should be considered negotiable if positive benefits can be secured in return.
The rebate was introduced because of imbalances in the workings of the common agricultural policy. The price that Britain should demand for negotiating the rebate is the reopening of the agreement on agricultural spending, an agreement to which it acquiesced.
We should support rural development; we should compensate farmers to ensure that environmental concerns are addressed. However, we should no more subsidise the very existence of farms than we should subsidise factories, quarries or coal mines. The CAP discriminates against farmers in developing nations and penalises our own consumers. A phased but significant programme of cuts in Pillar 1 expenditure should be introduced. That is the price Britain should demand. But to continue arguing that the rebate is simply non-negotiable is neither good for Europe nor best for Britain."@en1
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