Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-01-29-Speech-3-125"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20030129.6.3-125"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Madam President, Commissioner, the aim of this report is to assess the Commission’s implementation of the European Parliament’s recommendations. This is a useful exercise that will add effectiveness and credibility to our work and on which I congratulate the Commission and also our rapporteur. I should therefore like to review the main issues concerning the common agricultural policy that I raised in the discharge of the 2000 Budget, whilst reminding you, as required by Rule 9(1) of our Rules of Procedure, of the fact that I am an olive-grower. The high risk and even the practical impossibility of effectively monitoring the operation of the export refunds system was our overriding concern at the time.
We are pleased to note that, in his first annual report on the general activities of the European Union, the Director-General for agriculture has corroborated our viewpoint, in expressing his two main reservations about the Budget for this mechanism: firstly, that the Commission has reduced and simplified the system of refunds in the beef and veal sector and, secondly, that it is committed to gradually reducing the use of these mechanisms in line with negotiations at the World Trade Organisation. We feel bound, nevertheless, to regret the maintenance of export refunds for sugar for European countries from which we import sugar freely, because this seems clearly to be asking for further instances of the same roundabout fraud already detected in the field of butter.
We note the Commission’s intention to invest in the research and development of means to detect the falsification of oil, but we are unhappy that we are still spending absurdly high sums and imposing extremely expensive schemes on national and regional administrations, and also on oil producers, to monitor the number of olive trees, without any concern to prevent fraud, in total contrast with the lack of means to prevent and combat the large-scale fraud against the Community Budget, consumers and farmers that the falsification of oil represents. The same scenario or worse can be seen, incidentally, in the wine, dairy and most livestock product sectors. I still find it unacceptable that farmers who exceed their milk quotas are heavily fined and yet nothing is done to penalise dishonest companies and criminal networks that produce dairy products without milk.
To conclude, I must state that the Commission’s refusal to name companies who are given export refunds and other subsidies on the pretext that this would contravene the provisions on the protection of the individual is totally unacceptable. This is a concept of citizens’ rights that operates only in the interests of multinationals and large business concerns and which does not exist to protect consumers or even farmers, who are frequently the victims of a diabolical and destructive bureaucratic machine."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples