Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-26-Speech-4-008"
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"en.20090326.2.4-008"2
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"− Madam President, before going into the content of this proposal, I would like to thank the rapporteur, Mr Siekierski, and the members of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development for their work on this report.
Finally, let me stress that the Council is waiting for the outcome of today’s debate and vote before continuing its discussions. I hope Ministers have used the waiting time constructively. And from today’s debate should, therefore, be sent a clear message: do not forget those waiting in line at the soup kitchen or waiting for the next food package. So do not wait too long! We need to put this food aid scheme on a permanent footing for the future.
I would like to start by putting today’s debate into context, because this proposal is not about paragraphs, political power or promises: it is about people. Millions of Europeans are hit by difficult economic times and by the rapid rise we have seen in food prices since 2007. There are more people than we realise for whom the lack of adequate food is a daily concern: 43 million Europeans cannot afford a meal with meat, chicken or fish every second day. I think that is a striking figure.
The programme for the most deprived targets those in our society who are in need of food aid: people who worry whether they can feed their children tomorrow; people who do not think about what they will eat that night for dinner but about whether they will have anything to eat; people who enter no restaurant but the one carrying the name of
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With more than 13 million poor people benefiting from the programme, with 19 Member States participating and with the scheme being a stable outlet for intervention products, this programme has certainly shown its value. Parliament recognised this already in 2006, when it called on the Council and the Commission to place the programme on a permanent footing for the future and to extend the distribution of foodstuffs, without restricting it to the products for which intervention applies.
I am pleased to note that the report by Mr Siekierski endorses the Commission’s approach and agrees that it is necessary to keep the programme within the common agricultural policy. This is particularly important at a time when some claim that feeding people has nothing to do with our agriculture policy.
Until now, the programme has been financed exclusively by the Community budget. Our proposal now includes cofinancing. That is a significant change, but I believe it is a fundamental improvement of the scheme. Cofinancing will enable the total funds available for this measure to be more in balance with the real needs; it will encourage Member States to take greater responsibility for the programme’s management, and it is also a way to strengthen the cohesive element, since cohesion countries will have less cofinancing.
At the same time, I share the view that we should not run the risk of Member States withdrawing from the scheme. Therefore, we proposed a gradual phasing-in of cofinancing rates in order to maintain the difference between the cohesion and non-cohesion Member States.
I agree that we should do more to guarantee the nutritional quality of the food distributed. As the rapporteur mentioned, this could mean including fresh produce, in most cases produced locally. But it is not appropriate to outlaw foreign products or products coming from outside the European Union, as proposed in your report. That would mean additional and burdensome controls. It could be seen as a signal of EU protectionism, and it could even be questioned by our WTO partners. That being said, the large majority of the food distributed will in reality be produced in the European Union, mainly from intervention stocks and most probably from the tenders that we are now making, in particular in the dairy sector.
Given that charities are heavily involved in the scheme, our proposal gives the possibility to reimburse the transport and administrative costs of the NGOs. You suggest that storage costs should be covered as well. I am fundamentally in favour of this idea, but I cannot agree to your suggestion of leaving it to the Member States to fix the rates of reimbursement. We need to set the same maximum rate for all participating countries, not least to make sure that the programme remains efficient and keeps the focus on supplying food."@en1
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"Resto du Cœur"1
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