Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-13-Speech-3-040"
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"en.20020313.2.3-040"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, there is no doubt about it, agriculture is at present certainly one of the most difficult chapters to negotiate in the enlargement process. I would therefore like to preface my remarks by saying that there may not be, and there will not be, a link between reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and these countries joining, nor a composite measure to that effect, even though there are those who would like to see such things. The one must be dealt with separately from the other, although that does not mean that there is not a whole range of requirements and rules to be complied with by both sides. First of all, there is the need to guarantee the full transposition of the
especially with regard to the veterinary and plant-health sectors, quality standards for food safety and adherence to the regulations on the protection of animals. There is no dispute that there will, in some sectors, be transitional rules with time limits, but they will be few and far between. Furthermore, the Sapard programme, conceived as pre-accession aid, must at last be fully implemented, as what has been done hitherto has been unsatisfactory. We also support the Commission proposals for direct payments to the new Member States to start by being made gradually and in a form related to area rather than to production following their accession and for rural development programmes independent of production to be markedly topped up with resources, in order to avoid social dumping, among other things, in countries such as Poland. Agriculture and rural development still play a central role in these countries and will continue to do so for a long time to come. Not only there, either, might I add! Support, across the whole of the EU, must be given on the basis of multifunctional agriculture in all its many facets, thus further strengthening the second pillar, not only with regard to the WTO negotiations.
I would like again to make it clear that the idea of solidarity, by which our Community is governed and characterised, must be neither eroded nor done away with. This does not mean, though, that the Common Agricultural Policy was not in need of reform, both in our own states and in the candidate countries, whether enlargement took place or not. Any of the farmers' representatives who believes that no reform of the CAP is needed is, by his attitude, doing nothing more than accelerating the downfall of rural agriculture, the maintenance of which he constantly and stridently demands.
Let me turn to the Presidency of the Council and say that it is perhaps dawning on some of us that, in the 1999 negotiations on Agenda 2000, it might sometimes have made more sense to think along slightly less national and rather more European lines. Is it not so, Mr President-in-Office, that there can and will be no more inherited farms? As a Parliament, we want Europe to be enlarged and hence reunited, and I am certain that Commissioners Fischler and Verheugen will see to it that this does not fall at the hurdle of the agriculture chapter."@en1
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