Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-12-16-Speech-4-071"
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"en.20101216.4.4-071"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, today represents an important opportunity to discuss the strategic issue of protecting animal welfare in agriculture. On 1 January 2012, the terms of Council Directive 1999/74/EC will enter into force, laying down minimum standards for the protection of hens, tantamount to the abolition of conventional battery cages as a system of rearing for the production of eggs. This method of animal housing will be banned in favour of systems of rearing that guarantee better animal welfare.
Mr President, adopting the motion for a resolution on the welfare of laying hens, which we will vote on this morning, could represent a first and important step in this direction.
Mr President, the memory of the Council of the European Union on Agriculture, held on 19 July 1999, is fresh in my mind. It was an important day, on which, as the representative of my country (at the time I was the Italian Minister for Agriculture), I contributed to the approval of this important directive by voting for it.
Now, one year after the irrevocable entry into force of the new legislation, data show that European producers are proceeding to adapt their production system, but not without running into difficulties. What we need is a concrete commitment from the Commission to safeguard animal welfare, to protect producers who have adapted their system of rearing to Council Directive 1999/74/EC, and, at the same time, to effectively guarantee the passage of the new legislation, avoiding distortions in terms of market competition.
This is why my fellow Members and I felt it appropriate to add this important topic to the agenda of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, which I have the honour of chairing. Hard work over recent months, involving all parliamentary groups, resulted in the oral question of 28 October 2010, which puts three important issues to the Commission:
Firstly, to report on the implementation of the new legislation within the Member States;
Secondly, the actions to be taken in the Member States to guarantee compliance with the terms of the directive, and compromising where necessary with those undertakings that show a genuine desire to adapt.
Lastly, measures and guarantees to be adopted to avoid crises in the egg market in the coming years and to prevent unfair competition from third countries that are not obliged to respect the European Union directive within the European internal market.
These are the queries to which we are awaiting concrete and definitive responses from the Commission. Lastly, we ask the Commissioner to guarantee a more transparent market, along the lines of the concept of so-called reciprocity of rules, in order to facilitate the prospect of greater international convergence on the animal welfare standards applied by the European Union.
Attending to this matter, which we have discussed a number of times in committee since the start of the legislature, is essential to prevent Europe’s efforts on animal welfare – our efforts, Commissioner – from being rendered useless by a market that is incapable of recognising the social values that are bound up in foodstuffs. We need to reduce the distorting effects of the possibility that producers outside the European rules system could translate the lesser restrictions they are subject to into greater competitive advantages."@en1
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