Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-12-11-Speech-2-064"
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"en.20071211.8.2-064"2
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"Madam President, following the Commissioner’s introduction there is not really much more debate required, but I would still like to throw some light on the position of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development.
At a rough estimate there are at present about 18 Directives that farmers have to comply with in order not to have their income subsidies cut. There may be more to come. There is a soil directive in preparation, for instance. The Commission should investigate whether it might not be possible to reduce the number, and I do have one or two Directives in mind.
It is ridiculous that we have both a Nitrates Directive and a Groundwater Directive. The Groundwater Directive says that the permitted level of nitrates in groundwater is 50 mg per litre (if you exceed that, you are liable to penalties); the Nitrates Directive says 1.7 livestock units per hectare. We should have either one or the other, but not both. That is too much of a good thing. One of them must go, and I would say the Nitrates Directive.
The first element is cross-compliance. I do not know what it is called in other languages but we have adopted this word in Dutch. It is a familiar term amongst the farmers. We do indeed support this, as the Commissioner just said: it is an essential aspect of agricultural production and we think that this is defensible, because it sets requirements for agricultural production that go beyond what is necessary to ensure that the products from agriculture are fit for human consumption. We go beyond that with all kinds of Directives: Birds and Habitats Directives, environmental Directives, animal welfare standards, etc.
The big question in all this is: what form should the checks take? As far as the checks are concerned, I think that as we have more and more reforms it will be essential to have widespread support and understanding of the system of cross-compliance among farmers. If the methods are too bureaucratic, as they are at the moment, that will not be fostered. What could we change in this area?
First, there are too many controlling agencies in individual Member States at the moment and they also still visit on different days. We are convinced in this report that the number of controlling agencies should be kept to a minimum, that the checks should also be carried out on one day, and that the farmer should be given reasonable advance notice of the visit. How much notice should be given will be decided in the vote today.
We also believe that there should be a
provision for minor infringements, for petty transgressions: the authorities should not come down too hard in such cases. You cannot find fault with everything and besides farmers should never be punished twice for something that is covered by both European and national law That would mean paying two fines and we are against that.
An important point in the report – and I think that the Commission is also in favour of this – is that a great many things that are checked by the authorities under cross-compliance are also checked by private industry. Why should we have two inspection systems? Why is it not the case that if private industry checks something, then the public authorities say ‘fine, we will check the private industry schemes from time to time and if they are good, we do not need to carry out checks on the farms themselves any more’. That could make a huge difference, also from the farmers’ perspective. I think that could be an excellent form of cooperation with private industry.
To the Commission and Council, we are meanwhile in agreement on abolishing the 10-month rule. I think that the deadline for submitting applications in the Member States is a guide date for the application for support.
We in the Committee on Agriculture think it is reasonable that the new Member States should also be given extra time to adapt and we have said that if they eventually get 100% agricultural support payments, they must also observe the cross-compliance rules in full. We do not know what the future of the system will be but we do know that it is incredibly expensive at present.
Would it be possible for the Commission to produce a rough estimate of what it costs to implement it in each Member State, how the cost in one Member State compares with another and how it compares with the total expenditure associated with cross-compliance? This study could also come up with various options for how it could be done more cheaply through cooperation with private industries."@en1
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