Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-19-Speech-1-129"
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"en.20080519.24.1-129"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, I have the impression that the aim here is, as they say in Westphalia, to throw a sausage after a side of bacon, meaning to throw out a herring to catch a whale. In other words, the Tobacco Fund is being used in an attempt to safeguard the coupling of the tobacco premium until 2013. The Fund, which – as we all know – is also used to finance education on the harmful effects of smoking, was introduced here in Parliament to support the actual tobacco premiums, because there was strong opposition to smoking from a majority of MEPs, and many were asking how we could support tobacco-growing, given the dangers of smoking.
I have always been a supporter of the tobacco premium, because I believe that the two things are unrelated, but then we should not be hypocritical and undertake to do something to combat smoking if we are actually pursuing a different aim, namely the preservation of the premium. The issue at stake here is not the preservation of the premium; it is essentially a matter of the coupled premium, the objective being to prevent decoupling. We always act as if decoupling would deprive tobacco-growers of the premium. We know that this is not true, and indeed we have already discussed the whole issue in connection with cotton. Businesses will continue to receive payments; the only difference is that they will no longer be obliged to grow tobacco, and I believe that makes good sense.
I remember a trip to northern Greece with the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development when we visited the poorest of the poor. We saw the impoverished regions, but they were not poor because of decoupling, which had not been introduced yet, but because the tobacco industry was not paying growers in those regions a fair price for their tobacco and was even taking advantage of the premiums paid at that time to push prices so low that tobacco-growers were left with nothing at all from their premiums. We found that incredible at the time, and we wondered why the growers in that region, who grew spice tobacco, which is used throughout the world as a speciality tobacco in cigarette blends, did not receive sufficient payment to be able to make a living from tobacco cultivation alone, regardless of premiums.
If tobacco is no longer grown in some regions as a result of decoupling or in some countries where complete decoupling of tobacco aid has been effected, this does not mean that there are no alternatives in those regions but that growers cannot cover the cost of growing tobacco. What is therefore needed here is a showdown with the tobacco industry so that they start at long last to pay growers a decent price.
I believe it would be better, Commissioner, to leave education about smoking to others, for we in the European Union have done enough educating, and to channel these funds into rural development and into diversification measures for these poor regions instead. Moreover, these resources should be topped up to create other jobs in these regions besides those in tobacco production."@en1
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