Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-17-Speech-2-305"
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"en.20060117.22.2-305"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, this is not the first time that Parliament has made known its opinion on the reform of the sugar regime. I was one of the Members who voted in favour of the resolution we adopted last year. Among other things, this resolution called for the quota reduction measures to be reconsidered, in particular in the case of the new Member States. I am delighted that the Commission has revised its original strategy and proposed a reform based on a reduction in the guaranteed price of sugar that will meet competitive sugar producers and sugar beet farmers halfway. I have certain reservations about the report we are discussing today, however, since it calls for a smaller reduction in the price of sugar than that to which the Member States agreed in December. This agreement itself was the result of a compromise that was achieved by toning down the harder-hitting proposal by the Commission.
Firstly, it should not be forgotten that we suffered defeat at the hands of the WTO. We must therefore meet the requirement to open up our sugar market by 2009. In this connection, I can only wonder at the exaggerated amount of attention being paid to the interests of the least-developed countries. On the one hand, these countries would like the price of sugar to be reduced in markets outside Europe, but on the other, they want prices to remain high on the European market, to which they have privileged access.
Secondly, I should like to stress that reducing the price of sugar over a longer period would work to the advantage of less competitive businesses, and help perpetuate distortions in the sugar market. It would not only be competitive sugar producers who would lose out, but above all European consumers, since they would be the ones paying most of the cost – quite literally – of a more moderate fall in prices. At present, they have to pay three times more for sugar than consumers in other parts of the world. Is it acceptable for them to continue subsidising an extensive protectionist system every time they buy a product containing sugar?
We should remember that the main purpose of the European Union is to remove barriers to mutual trade, not to perpetuate and strengthen them. We should therefore prove that we are a truly European Parliament, and that we are not afraid of implementing market mechanisms
in the fields of sugar production and sales."@en1
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