Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-07-07-Speech-4-174"
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"en.20050707.26.4-174"2
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"Mr President, I would firstly like to thank Mr Freitas for the work he has done as rapporteur, which I believe to be very satisfactory. I would also like to thank our Union’s Commission for the work it is doing in favour of the outermost regions.
I believe that Mr Michel has said it very clearly. This is a success story: over the last 14 or 15 years, the outermost regions have benefited from special treatment via these programmes — Poseidon, Poseima and Poseican — which have allowed four million citizens, living on islands spread throughout the world — in the Central Atlantic, in the Caribbean and in the Indian Ocean — to have a decent way of life that is consistent with their needs. The programmes have also enabled certain regions whose people previously left those regions’ shores now to maintain their populations and, in some cases, even to bring new people in. In short, there has been a clear improvement in the living conditions in these regions.
This has been achieved by means of a very reasonable procedure, which consists, on the one hand, of allowing agricultural surpluses from the rest of the Union’s territories to enter our territory and also enabling other parts of the world to import products. On the other hand, it prevents those imports that are necessary for maintaining living conditions from destroying agriculture and other elements of the local economy.
The proposal now being presented to us by the Commission is intended to make the system we had more flexible. As the Commissioner has said, it was necessary to adopt 56 micromeasures that were not in reality in line with the importance of this type of organisation. The amendments being presented by the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development are aimed at making the mechanism more flexible and must also be accepted.
I would like to point out — perhaps for those people who are not aware of the situation — that what justifies this special treatment and this flexibility for the outermost regions is their complete inability to compete within the Union’s markets. In other words, the aid to the farmers of the Canary Islands, La Réunion, Madeira or the Azores is in no way going to prejudice the rest of the European Union, since the competition conditions are the same. On the contrary, I would say that these regions are going to facilitate the development of the economy in the rest of the Union, since they will have markets with a degree of purchasing power that benefit the whole of the European Union.
I therefore hope that this House will approve the report by the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development by a large majority and that these measures will continue to function to our benefit and to the benefit of the rest of the European Union’s territory."@en1
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