Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-27-Speech-3-354"
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"en.20060927.27.3-354"2
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"Mr President, since we are still here at this hour – you have to be, we have to be, and the Commission is here too – we should not spend a quarter of an hour arguing. It really does not matter whether the clock is striking midnight or quarter past; I intend to make full use of my five minutes.
We, Commissioner, are pretty much in agreement where our assessment of the situation is concerned; the organic market is going through a boom, with a shift from the producers who formerly marketed their products directly, from shops specialising in them and in health foods to chain stores who now want to cash in and exploit the boom in the organic market. If they get into the business, they will demand a cut of 10% or 20%, a quite considerable sum that the European producers cannot afford.
Your attitude to the existing regulation is inconsistent. At one point, you say that you want to change what it says about transactions with third countries, which amounts to a revision of it. You want a whole new regulation to deal with what is at the heart of this one, and that is what we have found questionable, since your way of dealing with most – almost every third article – of the draft regulation involves you saying that the details will be sorted out through the comitology procedure, that is to say, in the implementing provisions. We find that too imprecise. What we, in this House, asked you to do was to make improvements; that is why we have put forward only a working paper rather than a report.
As far as imports are concerned – that is to say, the relationship with the third countries – we see it as necessary that the products be obtained in the quantities that the chains need; the problem is that their production in those countries is not in line with EU standards, and so the rules applicable to this urgently need to be tightened up. We support that, even though, where the core regulation is concerned, we have misgivings as to whether you are perhaps not being too accommodating to the demands made by the chains, who are no longer interested in the names of the producers or the names of traditional organic farming associations, but want to get people buying anonymous food so that they can market it under their names. Here, then, there are divergent tendencies; we may well have our misgivings in one case, but in this one we are on your side in that we would like to see the EU’s standards maintained in third countries.
Although reference has been made to the notified third countries, it is still the case that 70% of imports reach us by way of what are termed import permits, which involves scrutiny, not of the production process, but, basically only of the accompanying documents that certify that something is ‘organic’. We all know that paper is patient; so we also need to see to it that the European Union’s standards apply in these countries.
According to you, we have gone rather further in our amendments, but that is not so, Commissioner; the fact is that we are in agreement with you. We are seeking greater precision in certain areas, and would like the European Parliament to have a hand in this notification process in the same way as the individual countries are to be involved in it; we would like to see this documented in a report from the Commission detailing how far you have got with the compilation of the data and how far the notification has progressed. We would also like to see a database set up to contain the data thus collected on the third countries, so that the risks can be monitored by means of checks – which, since we know the sort of people we are dealing with here, will have to be targeted – the object being to ensure that no cheating is going on.
We would like this report to take into account the criticisms we have made, and hope that you will not hold back from this House any of the data you have compiled. We would not want to see a repeat of what happened with the study on qualified market access, where all that was left at the end was market access full stop and qualification got lost somewhere along the road.
All that we are looking for now – since you have mentioned the WTO – is an example of something that will take us towards trade, too, being ‘qualified’."@en1
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