Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-02-Speech-2-238"
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"en.20030902.10.2-238"2
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".
Mr President, honourable Members, I would just like to start with a clarification. If, in the field of agriculture, we speak in terms of less-favoured or of especially disadvantaged areas, we have to distinguish between two things; firstly, those less-favoured areas in which hectare premiums are paid as part of the rural development programmes, in order to compensate for their disadvantaged situation, and, secondly, those areas categorised as Objective 1 areas by reason of their generally backward state of development. As you know, the Community can, in these Objective 1 areas, do such things as grant investment programmes higher cofinancing rates. There are also, in addition, quite specific conditions for what we term the outermost regions.
Let me start by establishing, in the context of reform, that it will continue to be for the Member States to decide what value and priority they attach to the measures for the less-favoured areas under the rural development programmes. They will, in any case, subject to modulation, have more funds at their disposal for this purpose. It is also the Member States who decide how much by way of structural funds they want to spend in the Objective 1 regions under the Guarantee Fund, how much they want to allocate to the Social Fund and how much to the Regional Fund. Nothing about this is changed by the agricultural reform.
It is also true, though, that there are some less-favoured regions in which the reform could cause agricultural production to fall, and this leads the public in the EU to fear that more and more land in especially disadvantaged areas could be left uncultivated. The reform of income aid will, however, link direct grants to the role played by the farmer as a manager responsible for his land and for the rural environment. The new farm payment will in fact be cut if management obligations are not discharged. We do not pay our farmers for doing nothing, and nor will we do so in the future. Those who receive premiums must manage their land in line with agricultural and environmental standards; moreover, the premium for less-favoured areas will be paid only if the land is properly managed.
I do not therefore go along with you in the conclusions to which you have come, and which underlie your question on the less-favoured areas. All the same, I would like to point out that the Commission will continue to closely monitor the effects of the new common agricultural policy on the less-favoured areas, for the reform does indeed provide for the possibility of appropriate adjustments being made, should it prove necessary to do so."@en1
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