Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-09-Speech-2-377"
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"en.20040309.14.2-377"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner Fischler, ladies and gentlemen, the opinion, which Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development adopted by a large majority on the basis of my report, considers the Commission’s proposal on olive oil to be a good starting point. Accordingly, with our pronouncement we are seeking improvements, but also significant adjustments. Indeed, we intend to maintain the income of able olive producers until 2013 and safeguard the environmental and socio-economic value of olive growing, but we go further than the Commission proposal in strengthening the aspects of food quality and safety, combating fraud, transparency of labelling and new specific support for young persons who need incentives to enter the olive-growing sector.
With regard to the aid system, in our view, the extreme variability of socio-economic and environmental conditions suggests that we should make the decoupled percentage flexible, starting from a minimum of 60% in any case. We believe that the option of increasing this minimum may only be considered and implemented when there is no risk of grubbing-up or that production will be abandoned. To simplify things and to obtain much more considerable resources than those provided for in the Commission’s proposal, with reference to improving quality, we propose combining aid for olive groves and aid for quality in one single measure and entrusting its management to producers’ organisations, since the fragmentation of our olive farms would not allow an appropriate relationship with the market. We also believe that the Member States should, as with all the other products, have the power to postpone the entry into force of the reform until December 2005 or 2006.
It is particularly important to have appropriate rules that guarantee an adequate income on the global market for the whole of the Mediterranean olive sector, putting the conflictual rivalry between the Mediterranean countries, as advocated at the recent conference of Euro-Mediterranean agriculture ministers held in Venice on 27 November 2003. In other words, we need clearer, transparent legislation, which is being called for by the producers, but also and especially by consumers, who expect and are entitled to have clear labels and correct information, in order to be able to identify high-quality, healthy products, as extra virgin olive oil has been scientifically proved to be.
Parliament is once again calling for a more satisfactory oil classification system, the prohibition of blends of olive oil and other oils or fats, compulsory indication on labels of the origin of olives – with origin being determined on the basis of the tree and the place of harvesting, and not the place of pressing and processing – and greater transparency in the inward-processing arrangements, in order to ensure that this mechanism cannot be used to brand and sell oils imported from non-Community countries as Community oils.
From this point of view, therefore, our proposal is consistent overall. I have examined other Member’s amendments. In brief, I support Amendment No 91 tabled by Mr Jové Peres, which seeks to maintain the ban on switching to other crops, as in the case where the Member States opt for the regionalisation of aid mechanism. Nevertheless, I do not support other amendments which have already been rejected by our committee when put to the vote.
Lastly, I would like to say, ladies and gentlemen of the European Parliament, that I have found Amendment No 87, tabled in committee by Mrs Redondo, in the proposed text to be put to the vote. It follows a logic which is, not just in my opinion, incompatible with the committee’s vote – and I am surprised to see it in the text before us – just as there is conflicting logic between this amendment and the products of most of the Member States. I trust that in the final vote we will be able to demonstrate the overall consistency of this opinion and thereby make Parliament’s credibility evident in its negotiations with the Council and the Commission."@en1
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