Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-03-11-Speech-2-249"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20080311.31.2-249"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Mr President, once again I want to thank the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development and Mr Goepel in particular for their hard work, resulting in an excellent report.
If your report is cool on modulation, I would describe it as extremely chilly on reductions of payments to large farms – you call that ‘degressivity’. This is not an issue that can be simply ignored. We know that with our transparency initiative, there will be a strong focus from all sides on the large sums of money going to single farmers and single landowners. On the other hand, I take everyone’s concerns on this issue very seriously. And I have looked with interest at your report’s concept of ‘progressive modulation’. I think there are some good ideas there that we would consider carefully on the legal proposals.
If I have been a little too long, it is only to show clearly my dedication and my huge interest in having the opportunity to discuss here in Parliament the future of the European agricultural policy.
We are at the stage in the first round where we have consulted many stakeholders and different organisations and individuals to have their opinions and to collect different ideas. The opinion of the European Parliament is crucial, together with the expected conclusions of the Council next week, as we work to finalise the legislative proposals scheduled to be adopted by the Commission on 20 May. Immediately thereafter, on the same day here in Strasbourg, I will be presenting to the European Parliament the legal texts. But, basically, I am quite happy to see that all the three institutions – the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission – although we have different ‘shopping lists’, are all in the same shop.
I will not go into detail on the different issues, but will give my view on the three most important ones. Firstly, on direct payments: these are inevitably linked to the long-term security that we want to give to our farmers. I therefore agree with the statement in your report that direct payments remain necessary as a basic income guarantee. The single payment scheme gives a real lift to the competitiveness of our farmers, but we must make the system more effective, more efficient and simpler. Therefore, I advocate further decoupling. Our experiences with the 2003 reform show that the decoupling has been working quite well and, therefore, I think we should move further and extend the benefits of decoupling, except where coupled payments have a very solid justification.
I have also noticed that you support the idea of a more flexible Article 69 as a valuable tool. However, we should not expect Article 69 to solve all the different problems, and I will fight any attempt to re-introduce coupled support through the backdoor using Article 69.
I will not go into detail about the dairy sector again, as we have already had this discussion. However, I will just mention some of the market instruments: intervention and private storage. Like you, I recognise that some of our market instruments still have a place, but we must keep them relevant to the European Union as it is now. I am glad that we agree that they should play their role in the future as genuine safety nets.
Risks related to bad weather and outbreaks of animal diseases, as you highlight, are certainly a focus point in our discussion. However, we are not starting from zero: the Council discussed this issue in 2005 and concluded that new measures at EU level should not interfere with what is already available in the different Member States. We have to be sure that new measures do not interfere with farmers’ ability to react to market signals, and they have to be compatible with the WTO system, where there has to be a loss of more than 30%.
Concerning modulation, I have made it clear on many occasions that we need to have for the future a very ambitious rural development policy. I was very disappointed with the fact that, during the discussions on the financial perspective at the end of 2005, the Heads of State and Government agreed to take a significant part off the rural development funding.
However, I must say that your report is rather cool about my ideas in this area. But I think that we can justify the fact that our rural development policy is financially overstretched. If we have high expectations for our rural development policy, including the need, as the President-in-Office rightly said, to use it to meet new challenges, like water management and bio-diversity, then it does not work to load more tasks on to it without putting in more money. I think modulation is the best way to provide more funding.
I have read with interest what you are proposing and I am sure we will come back to this issue."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples