Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-06-14-Speech-4-025"
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"en.20010614.2.4-025"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, the difficulties specific to the outermost regions are well known: distance, fragmentation and small markets, all of which raise costs, especially transport costs, and hinder their development. Now, based on Article 299(2) of the Treaty of Amsterdam, which recognises the specific character of these regions and the need to adopt appropriate Community measures, it is possible to take measures aimed at encouraging sustainable development and enhancing the productive sectors that generate employment. It is therefore important to use this legal base, regardless of any reference to articles of the CAP, the Structural Funds or other Community policies.
This is the context in which we must analyse the Commission’s proposals, which may be positive but fall far short of the needs of these outermost regions, as I have been able to confirm directly with bodies in Madeira and the Azores. Hence the importance of the work done by the rapporteur, Mr Martínez Martínez, whom I congratulate on the report he has drawn up.
In general, the report responds to the questions that the Commission has not addressed sufficiently but which are important for those regions. With regard to the first package of proposals, which aims at revision in the sense of increasing the rates of assistance under the Structural Funds, it is important to make a greater effort by slightly increasing the Community co-funding percentages, particularly as regards agri-environmental measures and public aid to the productive sector, given that these regions are among the poorest in the European Union and their production, processing and marketing structures need to be strengthened.
In relation to the second package of proposals, which aims at reviewing the machinery for aid to agricultural production in these regions, so that support for agriculture may have a positive effect on farmers’ incomes and on lower prices for the consumer, the almost one hundred proposals contained in the report are important. Those that deserve special mention, for their importance to the Portuguese outermost regions of the Azores and Madeira, are the need to strengthen the specific support for the restructuring of vineyards and vine growing, potato production and marketing, the livestock sector, not forgetting the matter of milk quotas, and the measures for ensuring the viability of sugar refining in the Azores, as well as increased support for tea, in addition to specific changes for Madeira wines and support for wicker production.
I therefore hope that the Commission and the Council will accept the proposals contained in the reports being debated jointly, also including the area of fisheries."@en1
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