Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-25-Speech-3-183"
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"en.20001025.6.3-183"2
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".
Today, the question of food safety has become a primary concern of the citizens of our countries. The issue has now become particularly acute, not just because of the advances in our methods of scientific investigation but mainly because the consequences of a certain type of farming aimed at boosting productivity at all costs and inspired by a free-trade philosophy have come fully to light. So today we need to correct the adverse effects on public health of a policy very largely inspired by the Commission, as Mrs Thomas-Mauro quite rightly pointed out this morning.
The question is what kind of mechanism will protect our citizens most effectively.
If we take a look at recent events, we find that with regard to BSE, for example, and taking only the case of France, it is the existence of a competent and independent national Food Safety Agency that allowed the French authorities to rapidly take the decisions needed to protect the health of its people.
But the contribution of the European institutions has, so far, been singularly negative. First there was the refusal by the Council and the Commission to take on board the French scientists' warnings, and we now see how relevant they were. Next came the incredible ruling by the Court of Justice against maintaining the ban on British beef, which France had decided at the express recommendation of the scientists. So that shows that the European institutions' behaviour on this issue that is vital to the food safety of our fellow citizens comes down to genuinely putting the health of Europeans at risk.
There is a lesson to be learned. In the name of respect for subsidiarity and effectiveness, we must give pride of place to measures taken in a national context, where independent agencies can rapidly provide genuinely scientific opinions undiluted by other considerations and the political authorities can take the necessary risk-management decisions for the benefit of the people who have given them a mandate to protect their safety.
Under these circumstances, a European agency can play a useful role if it really is independent, especially in relation to the Commission services and the various pressure groups at work there, and if its role is to complement and support the national agencies (from which it should emanate), in particular by acting as a forum for the exchange of expertise.
That is not at all what the Bowis report is proposing; it gives the impression that basically it regards food safety as another pretext for fuelling the well-known process of strengthening the Commission's powers at the expense of the national authorities and public safety.
In fact, without batting an eyelid the report endorses the new wording the Commission wants: we are no longer talking about a European agency but about an authority. The report seems to regard it as a matter of course that the Commission should appoint the director of the authority: no doubt that is the best way of guaranteeing its independence! It has no problem with the location of the authority in Brussels: so it will be right next to the Commission services and therefore perfectly "responsive" (sic) to its wishes, as recommended in the White Paper... On the other hand, the authority must be "given powers to require" Member States to provide reports, statistics and papers... As for paragraph 6 of the report, it quite classically announces the transfers of powers that are bound to follow.
Looking behind the apparent and certainly sincere concern to improve food safety in Europe, in fact we thus find ourselves faced with the usual logic: the aim is to get control over the Member States, in this sphere as in the others, to strip the national authorities of their powers and effectiveness and hand them over to a large, limp and flabby European institution, theoretically independent but in reality controlled by the Commission and its philosophy of absolutely free trade."@en1
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