Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-03-Speech-2-150"
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"en.20001003.4.2-150"2
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"Mr President, honourable members, we all know that the agricultural sector is one of the most difficult sectors when it comes to enlargement. But there is no point in running scared; the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development takes the view that, if we estimate pre-accession aid correctly, we can do it. However, we must be clear about a number of things: structures in candidate countries vary considerably; in fact they could not vary more, which is why everything we do must be geared to the structures which currently exist in the individual Member States.
In the import-export sector, only Hungary has a positive balance of agricultural trade with the EU-15 at present. All the others import more agricultural goods into their countries than they export to the Union. That should give us food for thought, because so many of our farmers are afraid that, if we unify, we shall all go under because they are all fully paid-up agricultural economies. That is not the case.
The dangers lie elsewhere altogether. We in the Committee on Agriculture are firmly convinced that we should give these countries as much as we can from SAPARD resources and that we should give it to the right agencies. We need to restock structures in the positive sense, from abattoirs and dairies to processing. It makes no sense to import pig carcasses into the EU-15, create the added value here and then send the finished products back to the shops in these countries. That way they will never be able to stand on their own two feet. Everything we do to start this process now will save money later.
We must also clarify openly and honestly in discussions with these countries, that the common agricultural policy does not imply that the same payments have to be made everywhere from day one of membership, without checking if there are price losses in the individual product segments. That would be unfair to other structures in the EU-15. This can be reasonably regulated with reasonable phasing-in.
Then, of course, there is the problem of transitional arrangements. In the veterinary sector, in the phytosanitary sector, these countries need transitional periods of 10, 12 or even 15 years. Obviously that is out of the question. And because it is out of the question, it is important to do what we can now so that any unavoidable transitional arrangements needed can be as short as possible. It is better to introduce measures now than to start a long fight five minutes before accession.
All these purely agricultural matters should not obscure the fact that the following applies in the agricultural sector: Unless institutional reforms are properly regulated before the first candidate countries accede to the EU, there will be much that we are unable to regulate as we would like to. Of course, no-one will be surprised to learn that the Committee on Agriculture takes the view that the important area of the agricultural economy, which continues to account for almost half the budget – and this will basically remain the case –, should come under the codecision procedure. I have been instructed by our whole committee to express this view emphatically for the attention of all the agricultural ministers in the Member States, irrespective of which political hat they wear, because that is where those that are holding back and oppose this are to be found. The future Member States, our candidate countries, are joining a changing common agricultural policy and it would be a poor show of parliamentary democracy in practice if they continued to be excluded from the democratic process of shaping the future common agricultural policy in an area which is far more important to them than it is for most of the fully paid-up Fifteen. That is a most important point. And I have something else to say: we need to say this loud and clear to our member governments, especially our agricultural ministers, in the first phase of the Intergovernmental Conference.
We shall have a fight on our hands in some areas; we already have. It is a question of money. The assumption is that we did not want to grant them the same blessings of the common agricultural policy in euros. That is wrong. But justice does not mean that everything is measured with the same yardstick. It means that every candidate country will receive aid, according to its needs, which puts it on an equal footing with the Fifteen. And that does not mean that the same numerical sums must be paid per hectare, per tonne or per head. That is not necessary and would create injustices. On balance then, we have nothing to fear, but we must reform, otherwise accession will not work in the agricultural sector."@en1
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