Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-25-Speech-2-063"
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"en.20070925.5.2-063"2
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"Mr President, we live and work in a global market economy, and we cannot expect to put in place legislation which interferes with that. Commissioner Kuneva, I have nothing to say to what you have said. I agree totally with everything you have said – my congratulations; just make sure that it is implemented.
As far as Commissioner Verheugen is concerned, I am sorry to say that the buck does stop somewhere, and it is all very well for the Commission to continue to pass the responsibility on to Member States, or whatever, but in actual fact you have to implement the legislation that is put in place by this Parliament. I believe, therefore, that it is the responsibility of your department to ensure that the products that come into the European Union are at least as safe as the products that we produce within the European Union. I say to Ms Breyer, a member of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, who quite rightly talks about legislation: there is little point in putting in place legislation in the European Union if all we do is import products which do not meet the same standards that we are putting forward within the European Union. We have put in place, for example, legislation on barometers. How many children eat barometers? And yet we stopped barometer production. About 10 minutes ago, we stopped the production of sugar in the European Union, and say we have to support Tate & Lyle, which imports it. We have things like foot-and-mouth and blue tongue coming into the European Union because we live in a global market, and yet we are not enforcing the legislation at the port of import sufficiently to ensure the safety of the products.
We do live in a global market, and the last thing I want is to see legislation that is trade defensive. We have to accept the fact that products are going to come in from the rest of the world, but they must be of the same standard. I want to ensure the safety of my constituents – the children, the grandchildren of the people that have elected me – when they go to buy their Christmas toys to ensure and guarantee that they are not going to die from some lead paint.
I leave you with one last thought. As a farmer, I have seen the effects of lead paint that cattle have licked off, that has been there for years, and it just kills them in a very slow and nasty way. Ensure and guarantee, Commissioner, that my children, my grandchildren and those of my constituents are safe."@en1
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