Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-12-15-Speech-5-047"
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"Mr President, before I move on to speaking about the report, I should like to thank the rapporteur, Mr Dary, very warmly. My thanks also go to the other Members of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, as well as to the other committees which have worked on this.
I will take the amendments one by one. Amendment No 1 is legally incorrect because Article 299 of the EC Treaty can only be applied for derogations from other articles of the EC Treaty. This is not the case here. Amendments Nos 3, 16 and 17 and the second part of Amendment No 24 could give rise to misunderstandings about the aims of our promotion policy. Amendments Nos 6 and 33 cannot be accepted because, given the limited funds available, they would make the EU share of the co-financing simply too great. They would also reduce the other partners' share of the responsibility. All we can say to Amendments Nos 9 and 22, which call for a special management committee to be set up, and Amendments Nos 7, 19, 23 and 27, where further procedural changes are sought, is that the Commission has to be consistent with its procedural provisions.
Overall, I am pleased that the proposal has met with your broad support. Consequently, thanks to your help and your opinion, the Community will soon be in a position to implement an important new promotional tool.
The proposed measures are intended to replace the 12 sectoral promotional schemes which the Council has adopted over the years. The existing schemes, which lacked uniformity, will thus be harmonised and simplified. We are adopting the same concept of promotion here which is already applied outside the European Union. The Union is thus providing itself with a flexible promotional tool in the internal market too, which can be used across the board. This means, therefore, that the old product-based strategy is being replaced by an approach with a greater thematic emphasis.
These promotional campaigns at European level can usefully complement Member States' measures by taking up the following themes: for example, quality, nutritional aspects, food safety, labelling, traceability, protected designations of origin, protected geographical indications, organic or integrated production methods, and so on. This would considerably improve the identity of European products in the eyes of consumers, and we certainly agree that this is necessary because consumers are, as we know, becoming increasingly discerning in these matters.
This concept of thematic information provision and promotional measures complementing national and regional measures requires strong commitment on the part of the Member States, in the form of co-financing and support for administering and monitoring the measures to be implemented.
Having analysed the amendments, we can distinguish three groups: firstly, amendments which the Commission can accept; secondly, amendments which are superfluous because the proposal is worded in such general terms – as befits a framework regulation – that they are actually already covered; and thirdly, a group of amendments which the Commission also rejects because they either do not fit into this proposal or would have undesired consequences.
The Commission can accept Amendments Nos 2, 4 and 10, which call for information on the production methods used for agricultural products and foods to be included in campaigns of this kind. As regards Amendment No 5, which calls for general guidelines by means of which only the essential elements of the programmes concerned are defined, the Commission is open to the possibility of including this idea in the wording of Article 5, Paragraph 3 of the proposal. It can also accept Amendment No 18 and the first part of Amendment No 24, which reduce the time interval at which the eligible themes and products are reviewed from three to two years, so as to improve the efficiency of the promotional tool. These are the amendments which the Commission can accept.
I now turn to the amendments which are already covered by the proposal and are therefore not accepted. These are the second part of Amendment No 2 and Amendments Nos 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31 and 32. The Commission quite understands the thinking behind these amendments, but we feel that the general nature of this draft regulation is sufficient. Moreover, some of these ideas will be taken up again in the implementing provisions.
I should like to comment briefly on the second part of Amendment No 2 and Amendments Nos 11, 13 and 28. An explicit reference to regional origin or other specific information would excessively limit the scope of the regulation. Amendment No 25 must also be rejected. Regarding the issue of when the new arrangements should come into force, the Commission is, however, prepared to consider transitional arrangements.
The final group of amendments which the Commission cannot accept are amendments which are at odds with the proposal, those which could have unwelcome consequences and those in which administrative procedures are proposed which are not customary practice."@en1
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