Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-15-Speech-1-097"
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"en.20060515.16.1-097"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, even though, in our campaign against this law, which has lasted three years, we have achieved some good tactical victories, the fact is that what we face tomorrow is a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea; we have to approve the compromise package from the informal trialogue, even though I have to say to the Commissioner that we are very far from pleased with it, for, if we do not, we will then be thrown back on the Council’s Common Position, which is every bit as revolting as the Commission’s original draft. Those are the facts of the matter.
Moreover, the tendency of this law – even with this compromise – is to deprive citizens of their freedom of choice by categorising foods as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ on the basis of mythical nutrient profiles. To this day – even after three years of debate – the Commission has been unable to submit even a rough outline of what these values might be. The consequence of this is that we will be obliged, tomorrow, to vote for something that does not actually exist; can being constrained to do that be described as a reliable way of making policy?
Scientists tell us – and this is where I do not agree with Mrs Poli Bortone – that the whole approach is nonsensical, since it is not food advertising that is responsible for people getting fatter and fatter. That is a highly complex problem and has to do with society as a whole; it is not one that can be done away with by censoring advertising. What really is wrong, and, as I understand it, stupid, is to take the line that individual foods need to be rated. So do you eat dry cornflakes all day? I do not.
It is not least thanks to our opposition – of which I am rather proud – that our cause is not completely lost. Mrs Poli Bortone has listed all the things we have achieved. We have, in particular, managed to save fresh products. It would not even have been permissible to describe fruit as healthy without it being tested scientifically, in a manner appropriate to the individual type, at the point of sale, which just goes to show how ridiculous the whole approach is. We have also managed to rescue cough lozenges; how embarrassing that we had to do that. We have also built in safeguard clauses for SMEs; how embarrassing that we had to do that, that there are laws that need that to be done to them, for it shows up all the pious speeches for the lies they are. Commissioner Verheugen has just delivered yet another one. This law will make SMEs suffer; it will cost jobs. It will make laws null and void, and will bring the consumer no additional benefit, for it will do nothing to reduce obesity and we already have laws to protect consumers from misleading advertising.
The Council and the Commission know all that, yet they are standing in this House’s way like a wall of concrete, shoulder to shoulder together in a way I have never seen before. The impression I get is that the Council is under the thumb of officials in the Commission – officials who themselves always want to make more policy, officials with legitimacy conferred on them by nothing and nobody, but whom the public pays well; not controlled by the public, but paid well by them, and it is the public who, at the end of the day, must pick up the tab. It is the public who will pay the price for this law, and that price will be paid in jobs lost. This law is the very opposite of what is always being talked about in the Commission’s fine speeches about cutting back bureaucracy, better lawmaking, the Lisbon agenda, and all the rest of it. This law is likely to make the public far more eurosceptic than they already are.
I think that is something we cannot allow, and we have no option but to vote in favour tomorrow in order not to end up with something quite terrible. That is what I said at the outset, but I am persuaded that there is still something that can be done in the face of this bureaucratic madness. I will be calling on the German Government to examine whether it might be able to take legal action against this regulation."@en1
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