Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-17-Speech-5-033"
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"en.20000317.4.5-033"2
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".
Mr President, I am presenting a report by the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development on the proposal for a Council regulation amending Regulation (EC) No 1577/96 introducing a specific measure in respect of certain grain legumes.
The European Parliament has been analysing this proposal since October 1999 and approved this draft legislative resolution unanimously on 23 February 2000. I would like to highlight the following aspects of the amendments proposed by the European Parliament.
First, Amendment No 1 on the inclusion of a Recital 2a. This amendment supplements the Council approach, which is purely commercial, and opts for a proposal with wider economic, human and food quality aims. Whereas the Council only talks about the market, the European Parliament highlights the economic interest for the Community of the production of these grain legumes. Given the deficit of protein crops in the European Union, Parliament considers that this system should be improved without cutting the level of aid.
Secondly, Parliament’s Amendment No 2 proposes that seed vetches should also be included in the aid system. Aid for seeds already exists for rice, chickpeas and lentils. We propose this aid because, as we all know, the production of seeds is subject to supplementary technical and quality control requirements, so that if the cultivation of seeds were not supported by some form of aid, this could have extremely negative consequences for the quality of production of seed vetches.
Thirdly, Amendment No 3 indicates that, in our opinion, the Commission should, without further delay, make proposals for the 2000-2003 period.
Before I finish, Mr President, I would like to point out that in 1993 – which is some time ago now – the Council indicated that it intended to gradually strengthen the current aid system for grain legumes. However, this has still not been done. Secondly, successive periods show that we are faced with a chronic imbalance in this system. The maximum guaranteed area is being systematically reduced, thus penalising time and again the farmers who are suffering reductions in aid of up to 20%.
Therefore, Mr President, what the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development of the European Parliament would really like to see is an improvement in the system. However, we appreciate what the Commission is telling us, that this is a time of serious budgetary restrictions that we could not implement without reducing aid. That is why we are presenting this proposal, which is really a maintenance proposal, and what we are saying to the Commission is that, without further delay, proposals must be drawn up at the latest for the 2000-2003 period to achieve an improvement in this system without decreasing aid.
I thank all the members of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development for their collaboration and support, as well as the opinion of the Committee on Budgets. Thanks also to the Commission for its willingness to hold a dialogue and I hope it will be open to our proposals."@en1
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