Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-13-Speech-4-031"
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"en.20000413.2.4-031"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in the long run, we cannot swim against the tide of free and fair world trade with the common organisation of the market in bananas. We ourselves also have to observe the rules that we signed up to when the WTO was founded. By infringing them and thus triggering sanctions, we are already blocking access to the major US markets – and also increasingly to Latin America’s markets – for whole sectors of our economy. We will be jointly responsible for large numbers of lay-offs in these sectors if we as the European Union do not change our stance. That is why we – and I am now speaking on behalf of a significant minority in the PPE Group, which could be a majority the next time – support the Commission’s position.
Following a transitional period, a tariff of EUR 275 per tonne is to be introduced for bananas from third countries, from which bananas from ACP countries would be exempt. This will protect the essential interests of the ACP producer countries. However, the Achilles’ heel of the Commission’s proposals is the lack of sufficient protection for the interests of banana producers within the European Union, essentially in the peripheral regions and the overseas departments. They are up in arms about this omission – particularly our French colleagues, and I assume the same applies to Portugal and Spain.
Commissioner Fischler, things are not as the officials in your directorate-general perhaps claim – and I would also like to address this comment to Mr Lamy. The arrangements for EU banana producers are not as good as they might be. There is still a need for a political compromise here. The structural measures envisaged in Title III of the Regulation on the common organisation of the market in bananas need to be considerably strengthened. If we made just 10-20% of the total punitive tariffs of EUR 400 million, that is to say EUR 40-80 million, available as agriculture budget appropriations, instead of diverting it for other purposes, we could help our banana producers a great deal.
I call on the Commission to improve the structural measures and so open up the way for a compromise which is fundamentally in accordance with your proposals."@en1
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