Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-12-11-Speech-2-071"
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"en.20071211.8.2-071"2
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"Madam President, the rapporteur’s explanatory statement is instructive in that it depicts cross-compliance as a condition for continued public support, and tells us that farmers are now being paid for ‘complying with Community legislation in the field of environment, public, animal and plant health and animal welfare’. It further states that such regulations are very strict compared with standards in the rest of the world.
That neatly encapsulates everything that is wrong with the EU’s attitude to agriculture, with an aggressive regulatory regime diverting farmers away from their natural ambit of producing food and turning them into guardians of the environment, or what this report calls rural development policy, all of which adds mightily to their costs and reduces output. It has also had the effect of putting farmers into direct competition for funding with establishments such as country parks and wildlife preserves, which would not naturally be their competitors.
I am aware that the intention of this proposal is to simplify cross-compliance, because it is openly admitted that it has created a heavy, bureaucratic burden for farmers and for Member States to enforce. It is my contention that it was a bad idea in the first place, and simplifying it is to merely administer a band-aid rather than a cure. As usual, in EU parlance, ‘simplification’ means more standardisation and more control by the Commission. Again, the major differences inherent in agriculture across the wide diversity of climates prevalent in the EU do not lend themselves to such standardisation. This report enthusiastically trumpets the view that cross-compliance is an important instrument in justifying public support for farmers. I doubt that even one per cent of the public would have heard of cross-compliance, never mind understand what it means. For real simplification, let us do away with cross-compliance altogether and let farmers get on with what they do best, which is to grow crops and rear animals."@en1
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