Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-02-01-Speech-4-015"
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"en.20010201.3.4-015"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I know, Commissioner Byrne, that serious action is being taken in a bid to make preventive consumer protection a permanent feature of EU policy. I know that many of these very far-reaching decisions are needed because past mistakes are still catching up with us. May I state clearly for the record here that BSE owes a great deal to government failings, to gross negligence in the United Kingdom and to multiple acts of negligence on the part of the Commission up to 1996 – I can honestly say that I know of no-one who got it right in the fight against BSE. Government failings are the main issue; errors were noticed too late, decisions were taken too late and when decisions or bans were introduced, there were not properly controlled. That is still dogging us. That is why the measures which you have presented, Commissioner, are without question right and proper and we call on the Member States to do their very best to implement them as quickly as possible.
However, may I also state for the record that Parliament called back in November for all animals over 18 months old to be tested and, Commissioner, I see a danger here. If, with the removal programme today, the thrust of the resolution is test or remove in the sense of preventive consumer protection and several Member States test all their animals, while others test
remove, then by the end of the year the statistics will be meaningless and we must avoid that at all costs.
We would therefore welcome your comments on this. I should also like to ask you to clarify the problem of third countries as quickly as possible, because here too there is a huge risk from infectious materials brought in over past years. Here too, the question of uniform consumer protection arises. Then we also take account of the financial aspects. We risk destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs in Europe, which is why the Commission must also see if, as in France for example, we can spread the financial burden equally and fairly between everyone in the form of a surcharge, a meat tax or by charging value added tax on agricultural products, so that a reasonable solution can be found to the problem of disposal. We must do everything, including under the financial programmes in the agricultural budget, in order to make it 20% or 30% cheaper to get animals to market, for example through sectoral agreements, otherwise we shall simply never get a grip on the situation."@en1
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