Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-22-Speech-2-248"
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"en.20080422.49.2-248"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, my group requested this debate because we believe that action is urgently required. Commissioner Michel made some pertinent and good remarks about what the Commission can do straight away. However, we also requested this debate because we want to discuss the basic principles behind the way food prices are developing, and the consequences of this.
There are many explanatory factors. The world’s population is increasing, the amount of land available for cultivation is limited, the standard of living – and with it the ability to purchase and consume food – is rising in many parts of the world. In itself, that is a positive development. Consumption of meat in China, for example, is increasing rapidly. However, this decreases the amount available worldwide. The increase in energy prices and political goals – including our political goals in relation to climate, for example the fact that production of biofuels is becoming more attractive – all bring the results that Mr Daul has just described.
These are all explanatory models that we are all familiar with. However, there is one point I would like to deal with that I feel is not mentioned frequently enough. My fellow Members will go into the various points that I have just described in more detail in their remarks, but I want to introduce one point into our deliberations that we do not talk about at all and which I believe is essential in the crisis, and that is that the major mutual funds that have taken possession of all levels of economic life and move hundreds of billions of dollars around the world every day – these mutual funds, the hedge funds, have taken control of the food sector.
I do not mean to criticise the people who have been trading internationally in commodities for the last 140 years. That is completely normal, but what is happening now is no longer normal, and that is that enormous sums are being wagered on increases in food prices and huge gambling is going on. This means that the banks in Europe are advising their clients: ‘make the most of increasing food prices so that you can make a profit on your investments’. By implication, this means ‘create a food shortage so that prices will rise and you can make a profit’. Ladies and gentlemen, that is nothing less than watching ‘casino capitalism’, which is a concern for us at all levels, drawing up its chair at the tables of the world’s poor. That is the real moral scandal behind this crisis and that is why we want to discuss it in this forum.
More than ever, this crisis provides good grounds for the necessity for international control of the financial markets. I can live with enormous profits being made within a few seconds in any area, in gold trading, if you like, but not when it comes to feeding large proportions of the world’s population. That is immorality taken to the extreme and that should not be underestimated in this debate.
At this point we must discuss the immediate consequences this has for us. What repercussions does it have for the reform of the agricultural commodity market policy here in Europe? What role does our own export subsidy policy play? Are we, with our exporters, contributing to food shortages because agriculture in the affected regions of this world cannot develop sufficiently on its own? What is our answer to the question of greater availability of bioenergy? Must this automatically be accompanied by shortages and limited production of food? Or will there, in the next generation, be technological developments in the area of biochemistry – and Mr Daul is right here – that could bring us to the point where we no longer needed to use only land that has been used until now to produce food?
We must consider all these questions, but they must not distract us from one thing, and that is that we cannot allow a financial system that is coming apart at the seams to exacerbate hunger in this world, just so that a few capitalists can make even greater profits."@en1
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