Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-15-Speech-1-055"
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"en.20000515.3.1-055"2
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"Mr President, in its proposals to the Council of Ministers, the Commission has not set out the prices of products and subsidies, as it falsely claims it has done; in our opinion, it simply wants to remind us of the prices and subsidies which will be in force for the period from 2000-2001 in accordance with existing regulations, and at the very most, to amend some monthly increments to the intervention prices of any products to which this system still applies.
We should like to take this opportunity, however, to note that first: producer prices and subsidies have been frozen for numerous agricultural products for twelve consecutive years, as is the case with sheepmeat and goatmeat, whereas for other products they have been falling due to the constant increase in production costs, thereby reducing net agricultural incomes, as the Eurostat figures also show. The question therefore is: what are the farmers doing about this?
Secondly, eroding or even abolishing the intervention system will leave farmers at the mercy of traders, who buy from producers at derisory prices and then often resell at substantially higher prices. As a result, while nominal producer prices have fallen, often quite sharply, consumer prices have risen. In other words, both producers and consumers are being bled dry in the name of protection, which is what the European Union claims it is doing. The question is what will farmers and consumers do about this? Will they step up their fight?
Thirdly, low quotas and the resultant extortionate fines are eating up the subsidies for the 1999 harvest. Thus the subsidies end up becoming a white elephant. A blatant example is that of oil, which also concerns my country, and in particular my native island of Lesbos. Despite declarations that the 1998-1999 subsidy would be GRD 460, producers were only paid GRD 330, one year later. The same applies to cotton where, although the minimum price is EUR 101 per 100 kilos, Greek producers will be paid less than EUR 65 because of the co-responsibility levy.
We have the following comments to make on the issues addressed in the report: as regards cereals, we disagree with the reduction in the monthly increments of the intervention price, which should have been increased. Also, it must be said that this approach is further eroding the intervention system and, as with other products, it will apparently be abolished altogether for cereals. We also disagree with the monthly increment being paid in November, since harvest time in Greece is in June. And similarly with rice, we recommend that intervention commence on 1 October or November and not on 1 April because otherwise, our producers are at the mercy of greedy profiteering traders for six months…."@en1
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