Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-09-11-Speech-2-755-000"
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"en.20120911.43.2-755-000"2
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"Mr President, we have to compare what the Commission is saying about their wider policy aims on employment, social living conditions and trade, and what they are saying about sugar.
Recently, both President Barroso of the Commission and President Van Rompuy spoke at the Jobs for Europe conference. Each acknowledged the extreme seriousness of unemployment in EU Member States. However, I would wager a bag of sugar that neither of them mentioned the fact that Iceland, Norway and Switzerland have higher employment rates than any EU state, even the mighty Germany. This little booklet tells you all about it.
Their words about employment are not matched by their actions, one of which is to raise tariffs against imported raw sugar cane for which there is a ready market. This restriction of supply is a direct cause of lost jobs in the sugar cane refining sector.
What twists the knife here is that these tariffs are based on hopelessly inaccurate sugar forecasts made by the Commission in 2005. If the Commission wished to keep food affordable and to keep individuals out of poverty, why enforce a policy that will make sugar more expensive?
There is another Commissioner who also has been caught with his fingers in the sugar bowl. This is Mr De Gucht. He recently enthused about the importance of deepening the EU’s trade with third countries. He informed us that this had the potential to increase the GDP of the EU by the equivalent output of a country the size of Denmark or Austria.
Restricting sugar imports from overseas countries does seem a strange way to increase trade with them. The Commission’s favourite response when confronted like this is to point to the bilateral trade negotiations that they are conducting with countries in Central America, and assuming that the sugar trade that results from this deal will compensate for the shortfall from the ACP and the less-developed countries.
However, 300 000 tonnes of new sugar can never replace 1.5 million lost tonnes of traditional sugar and the sooner the Commission faces up to this, the better for all concerned.
Our UK House of Lords highlighted this very point last week in their enquiry into the EU sugar regime. The fact that they should even deem such an inquiry necessary should ring alarm bells, and I hope that their very critical conclusion will force the Commissioners to wake up and smell the cane."@en1
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