Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-12-Speech-2-038"
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"en.20050412.6.2-038"2
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"Mr President, there is a lot I should like to emphasise in connection with the matter we are now to address, namely discharge for the 2003 budget. This includes shortcomings in the accounting system, the Member States’ unwillingness to claim back funds paid out in error, the European Development Fund and excessive travel allowances paid to MEPs. In view of the limited time I have to speak, I wish, however, to focus upon a smaller but, in terms of principle, important part of the EU budget, and one that is quite incomprehensible from our citizens’ point of view: the subsidies for tobacco cultivation.
Every year, European taxpayers are forced to pay out close to SEK 10 billion in subsidies for tobacco cultivation. That is a terrible waste and a quite disgusting way of dealing with people’s tax money. To cap it all, the tobacco subsidised by the EU is of such very poor quality that no European manufacturers want to use it. Instead, this very same tobacco is used to drive tobacco manufacturers in poor countries out of business.
The subsidies for tobacco cultivation are no less bizarre in view of the fact that the Commission has now launched an anti-smoking campaign estimated to cost SEK 700 million. May I say that this is the height of hypocrisy. In debating the Commission’s discharge, Parliament can make it clear that tobacco subsidies must be abolished. With his casting vote in the Committee on Budgetary Control, the June List’s Mr Lundgren has, unfortunately, ensured that we now have a parliamentary situation in which the European Parliament is supposed to defend the most shameful agricultural subsidies. I appreciate the fact that Mr Lundgren stated publicly yesterday that he had made a mistake. The only problem is that the damage has already been done. It remains the case that, despite the fact that, before the elections for the European Parliament, the June List promised to work towards phasing out tobacco subsidies, the most abiding result to date of that self-same June List having been elected to Parliament is its having contributed to ensuring the very survival of the tobacco subsidies.
I hope and believe that, in plenary, Parliament will do everything it can to correct Mr Lundgren’s gaffe and vote in favour of an opinion stating that Parliament wants to see tobacco subsidies abolished."@en1
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