Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-02-13-Speech-2-271"
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"en.20070213.19.2-271"2
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"Mr President, I would just like to touch on some of the major issues that have been raised by many of you in this very important debate.
I am looking forward to holding discussions with you in the future on the wine reform that I will present to the Council, hopefully just before the summer break, and then I will be happy to come here to the European Parliament to present it at the same time, as the basis for our future discussions.
Grubbing-up was mentioned by almost all of you. I am not quite sure that you listened carefully to what I said in my introduction, namely that we need to ensure that grubbing-up does not disrupt important and legitimate social and environmental concerns. Listen carefully, and I will take this into consideration when we make the legal proposals.
Mr Graefe zu Baringdorf said very clearly that grubbing-up should not be forced upon our winegrowers. Exactly. It should not be, because the decision on grubbing-up is one for winegrowers and winegrowers alone to take. It is not a decision for the Member States or for the Commission, but exclusively for the winegrowers. But we should not force those growers that are today struggling to be successful in winegrowing to remain in a business where they cannot make money year after year. So let us give them a possibility to leave the sector in a decent way.
On distillation, I have yet to meet anyone willing to tell me, off the record, that crisis distillation could ever make good sense. On the contrary, I think it gives our citizens an excuse to portray the common agricultural policy in the most negative way, referring to the old-fashioned methods and tools that we used in previous times. We cannot defend spending half a billion euros every year on getting rid of wine that nobody wants to drink. This does not work and I hope you will support me on this.
Therefore, we need promotion. It is something that the European Parliament has stressed over and again and I am prepared to make a push on this. But promotion at European level must not be a cushion for the wine sector. The wine sector itself also needs to be much more aggressive.
In Ireland we have seen the consumption of wine increasing. And today 70% of the wine consumed in Ireland is imported from outside the European Union. Therefore, I simply did not understand why at the recent World Ploughing Championships in Ireland, which attracted 250 000 visitors, only two wine producers were present, neither of them from Europe. I can only ask why.
On imported must for vinification, I have said clearly from the beginning that we have to put everything on the table and I have taken note of the reactions from the European Parliament, from different Member States and from stakeholders.
Christa Klaß mentioned that there are huge differences within the different regions. I have been able to see this for myself and therefore I think we have to stress the importance of the idea of national envelopes in the Commission communication. I think it is an excellent possibility for Member States and for regions to allocate the different tools and the money as part of a national envelope completely tailor-made for the different regions. I think this is crucial.
Quite a lot of you stressed that we need to base our future in the wine sector on quality, quality and quality, and I can totally endorse that."@en1
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