Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-03-12-Speech-1-109"
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"en.20010312.7.1-109"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, agriculture is not like other commercial or industrial products. Unlike a captain of industry, the farmer cannot simply decide to relocate his means of production to wherever the manufacturing conditions are most favourable: where the wages are low, the sun always shines, and there is enough rainfall. So different rules must apply to agriculture, and food safety and food security – in other words, food sovereignty – must be the first commandment for every individual state.
The multifunctionality of agriculture must also be recognised and enforced by the World Trade Organisation, and that means that agricultural funding must be based on ecological and social criteria as well. The task is not, and I must make this quite clear, to engage in new forms of agricultural protectionism targeted especially at developing and threshold countries. Again, they must be looked at separately in this context.
It also means, however, that the European Union cannot dump its many surpluses with high export subsidies at global market prices in order to disrupt or even destroy markets elsewhere. There are countless examples of this. And one thing is clear; at the prices shaped by the global market, no one can possibly produce agricultural products under socially and ecologically compatible conditions and still make a profit. That is amply demonstrated by the current agricultural crisis which we are witnessing here in the European Union. We must, therefore, focus primarily on the European internal market, and those who wish to produce for the global market should do so, of course, but they should do so without subsidies and support from the European Union.
One thing must be clear: food safety and consumer protection must have absolute priority. There is one basic rule which we must not ignore: people everywhere in the world need healthy food, drinking water and air to breathe. Unless we have these three basic elements of life, everything else is irrelevant."@en1
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