Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-09-06-Speech-1-069"
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"en.20100906.17.1-069"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, I should like to apologise on behalf of my colleague, Mr Alves, who was the shadow rapporteur for our group. His luggage has been lost, and so he was unable to join us in time. He has therefore asked me to replace him, which I am very happy to do.
At a time when food security and food sovereignty are under threat, it is irresponsible, with regard to the public and our farmers, to pick apart our initial motion for a resolution, which is urgently needed for our farmers, who – should anyone still need reminding – make up a fundamental section of our society.
I should like to emphasise the excellent report by our colleague, Mr Bové, in which we advocate fairer revenues for farmers and a more transparent and better functioning food supply chain in Europe. Moreover, I am also delighted with the compromise we reached in the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development.
Indeed, following, among other things, the serious dairy crisis which befell us in 2009 and of which the causes are still present today, there was a need to identify the toxic factors responsible for the long descent to hell of that sector – which, incidentally, is not the only one in this situation.
Some potential solutions have been found to ensure that our farmers can finally do better than just cover their production costs – which, I might add, they cannot always do – and actually earn a fair income from their work.
Although we recognise just how important it is to have a supply chain in which producers and consumers are no longer the ultimate losers, at either end of the chain, and although we successfully arrived at some balanced solutions, it appears that the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe and the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) are going back on certain fundamental paragraphs of the compromise amendments negotiated before the parliamentary recess.
Unfortunately, my speaking time is too short for me to specify the paragraphs that might be rejected during the vote in plenary. However, if I had to mention just one, it would be paragraph 21, which considers that there is a need to prohibit selling below purchase price at Community level. May I say that I find the position adopted by the ALDE Group and the PPE Group scandalous: it calls into question this paragraph, which is crucial for our farmers. How could we allow our agricultural products to be sold off cheaply for the benefit of the distribution sector and, more blatantly still, for the benefit of the processing sector?
How can one question, by rejecting paragraph 41 of the report, the relevance of creating an independent global regulatory agency against speculation on food commodities?
I could also mention paragraph 52, to which I am particularly attached since I tabled it in my group together with my colleague, Mr Tabajdi. This paragraph considers that preferential treatment should be granted to producer organisations, farmers’ cooperatives and SMEs when awarding public procurement contracts in the food supply chain, and therefore calls on the Commission to suggest measures in that regard. It, too, was the subject of a compromise which is apparently today being called into question by both the PPE Group and the ALDE Group.
At a time when millions of people throughout the world are suffering from malnutrition and famine, and when speculation is exacerbating families’ financial problems – the speculation on wheat stocks following the fires that affected Russia this summer is a telling example of this right now – have the agri-food industry lobbies gained the upper hand over what seems obvious to all of us? I wonder what kind of terrible stunt we are pulling here. Is it the case that in the PPE and ALDE Groups, processing and distribution considerations take precedence over the protection of producers, who are nonetheless today under threat?"@en1
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