Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-27-Speech-2-050"
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"en.20050927.5.2-050"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, it is true that after twenty years of contacts between the European Union and the United States, the first agreement has been reached. But we see this just as a starting point and not something with which we should be content. I agree with the majority of what has been said in this Parliament and, above all, I hope that the Commission will take good note because I have not heard a single person say that they are satisfied with this agreement.
These first agreements do not guarantee effective protection for European designations of origin. However, they do leave the Community market open to United States wines produced according to wine-making practices not authorised in the European Union, such as watering. It is going to be difficult for our wines, produced according to traditional methods and high-quality criteria, to compete with others produced by means of much cheaper industrial processes.
My country, Spain, is disappointed by this first agreement and we hope that the second phase will be far more convincing. Amongst many other things, we are particularly worried about the issue of semi-generic designations; we believe that it is they who have lost out most. It is true that the United States have committed themselves to not using typical European designations, but only for wine that they export to third countries. They can therefore continue to use the same descriptions that they have been using to date in their own territory, with the added complication that United States legislation views descriptions from my region, such as ‘Sherry’ and ‘Málaga’, as semi-generic and not designations of origin.
The second phase of the negotiations will begin shortly; we call on this Parliament to defend the geographical indications more firmly in those negotiations, to which end we must open up a debate on the future of semi-generic terms. We need to hold a dialogue on traditional terminology, certifications and wine-making practices and, in particular, it is necessary to create a joint committee for wine-making issues.
In order to work better in the future than we have until now, this Parliament is prepared to work with the Commission; we are going to adopt a resolution which we must take into account so that what has been happening to us until now does not continue. It would also be desirable for the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development to produce an initiative report so that what has happened does not happen again and so that this Parliament’s opinion is taken into account in order to try to save the European wine-making sector."@en1
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