Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-02-15-Speech-3-282"
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"en.20060215.17.3-282"2
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"The Strategic Guidelines of the Community for the area of rural development in the 2007–2013 programme period constitute a worthwhile and necessary document. I support the amendments of our Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, as they enhance the Council proposal. I also admire the good work done by Mrs McGuinness, the rapporteur.
According to the strategy, rural development should accompany the implementation of a new, market-oriented common agricultural policy, and should support the key role of the market within this policy. This is all very well. The budget cuts proposed for the CAP in the Financial Perspective, however, are causing justifiable concern over the real benefits of rural development. Further concern results from the course of negotiations in the WTO, where it appears that European farmers could be put at a disadvantage in their competition against the rest of the world. There are also risks, however, arising from the restrictive nature of ongoing reforms, as was the case for sugar reform, as well as other reforms that are in the pipeline.
Studies also suggest that there is a risk of the rural economy being weakened because of the transition to single payments per farm, etc. It goes without saying that the above risks are greatest in the new member countries. For example, in my country, Slovakia, following the transition to single farm payments, agricultural output is expected to fall by a further 17%. These are dramatic figures, since we have increased the importation of food by a half over the past two years due to the discriminatory influence of the CAP in the new Member States, and the export-import balance in Slovakia’s agricultural sector trade has deteriorated by one-third. The worst-off are the most backward, typically rural regions that are falling behind virtually in front of our eyes. At the same time, all of the EU resolutions have stated that our policies should be working to narrow the gap that the more backward regions are facing.
According to the findings of the Slovak non-governmental organisation ‘Rural Parliament’, the countryside depends entirely on the prosperity of agribusinesses for its development. Rural areas develop where agribusinesses flourish. Where business is slow in the countryside, entire rural areas are on the decline, and rural development becomes impossible. The problem of the new Member States is therefore that of a deficient rural economy resulting from the uneven effects produced by the role of the market as embodied in the CAP."@en1
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