Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-06-03-Speech-2-202"
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"en.20030603.6.2-202"2
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"Mr President, the Commission’s proposals are not in the interests of farming and could have serious consequences for family-based farming and for small and medium-sized farmers, unless some of their basic assumptions are revised. Instead of correcting the present imbalances in the distribution of aid amongst countries, areas of production and producers and instead of paying particular attention to the specific characteristics of countries such as Portugal, the intention is basically to ensure that the Community budget under the enlargement process is frozen and to take a step further towards liberalising the farm sector at world level, with a view to the forthcoming negotiations at the World Trade Organisation.
One of the policy’s fundamental principles is to establish aid on the basis of historical reference criteria from recent years and to ensure its decoupling from production, which primarily benefits the large producers and the countries with the most advanced forms of farming and condemns the producers that lag behind, the small-scale and family farmers, to their current situation. Consequently, in addition to speeding up the process of concentrating production and land, this will set in stone the current inequalities in aid distribution in which Portugal suffers greatly, and encourage absentee land ownership and speculation on the market in farmland. It will promote unfair competition between the forms of productions entitled to aid and those that are not and create further hurdles to entering the sector, particularly for young farmers.
We cannot accept this being converted from a policy of support for production to a policy of social handouts. The CAP reform that we want to see is quite different and we regret the fact that the opportunity provided by this mid-term review to establish such a reform has not been taken. Some of the amendments adopted by the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development are to be welcomed but most of them are not. One of the most worrying is the report by Arlindo Cunha, which is dangerously similar to Commissioner Franz Fischler’s proposal. In fact, it not only fails to put forward a genuine proposal for modulation, it also accepts decoupling aid from production for some payments for arable crops and bovines. What is required is for instruments to regulate the market to be promoted, guaranteeing the maintenance of a price that is fair and that compensates for farm production, for the principle of Community preference to be guaranteed in order to protect the internal market, and for consumer safety and food sovereignty to be promoted, taking account of Portugal’s conditions and specific characteristics. We shall continue to fight to achieve these aims."@en1
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