Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-06-05-Speech-4-054"
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"en.20080605.3.4-054"2
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"Mr President, I also wish to offer my congratulations to the rapporteur for the hard work he has put into this report.
This proposal aims at reducing the administrative burdens in food-related enterprises. Specifically, the express goal is to exempt micro-enterprises from basic HACCP procedural obligations but without, of course, in any way compromising food hygiene and consumer health safety. This was deemed necessary as companies with less than 10 employees, whose activities consist predominantly of the sale of food directly to the final consumer, are suffering severely under the heavy bureaucratic necessities of HACCP to the extent that, in many cases, bankruptcy becomes an inevitability.
Such an aim is fully in line with our expressed wish to support small businesses in their antagonistic and – in most instances – unfair fight for survival against the large companies. This aim appeared at some stages of our deliberations not to be shared by either the rapporteur or the Council. It became my understanding that their preferred line was – and, it seems, probably still is – to provide exemptions and flexibility equally for all companies, large and small. At first sight and in theory, this may appear proper, but in practice it is grossly unfair to small companies and clearly defeats the purpose of having this piece of legislation in the first place, which is of course to help the micro-enterprises.
Some may argue that this is preferential treatment and unfair competition. They may be right on strictly legalistic and oversimplified theoretical grounds but, in terms of fairness and long-term planning, it is the same as putting a 6-foot champion and a 3-foot child in a boxing ring on exactly equal terms. Our philosophy is that, in some circumstances, the small and weak need some privileged assistance. Otherwise our free internal market will become a deadly pond where the big fish will eat the little ones and then probably eat each other. Our voting philosophy reflects this. I urge you to vote to protect the small businesses of Europe."@en1
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