Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-10-23-Speech-3-304"
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"en.20021023.7.3-304"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, this report contains some very important statements, particularly where it recognises that mechanisms to protect EU farmers through the common agricultural policy are competing with the interests of farmers in developing countries, where it calls – as Members have done repeatedly – for the progressive elimination of trade and tariff barriers and increased access to markets for producers from developing countries and regrets the EU subsidised produce dumped on developing country markets.
The report contradicts itself on this matter, predicting devastating effects of free trade which I am sure will not come to pass in the agricultural sector, but the central concern, which, I repeat, has been mentioned several times in this evening’s debate too, is – and, at European level, must be – the barriers which the European Union continues to erect to
access of goods, including agricultural produce, from developing countries. We must bear in mind that farm subsidies in wealthy countries amount to USD 350 billion per year, which is seven times more than the USD 50 billion which the same countries appropriate each year to external aid. In this connection, we could recall what Oxfam pointed out too, namely that, in actual fact, thanks, purely, to trade barriers, the aid we give to a continent such as Africa, for instance, is less than the value of the trade opportunities we provide for these countries.
There are two things I would like to say to the European Commission. I believe that we need to reflect on the characteristics of an agricultural policy which would be sustainable for the developing countries and, therefore, on the fact that the Community agricultural policy is unsustainable. I believe we must start to take the line that the CAP has to be abolished, albeit gradually, for there are no longer any economic, social, national, European or international grounds for preserving the CAP system. The reform proposal put forward by the Commission is inadequate in this sense, for it preserves the amount of aid completely intact. The report helps us to understand the devastating impact of this on the developing countries.
The Commissioner mentioned the Everything but Arms initiative, and rightly so, but I would like to remind her and the House as a whole that the Everything but Arms initiative itself provides for the deferral of the definitive abolition of tariffs on three major products – bananas, rice and sugar – to 2009. I feel that this does us no credit at all."@en1
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