Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-19-Speech-1-128"
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"en.20080519.24.1-128"2
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"Madam President, thank you very much, Commissioner, for your presence here. I was talking to the President of my region who has a high opinion of you, and I reaffirm that here today.
They are only asking for time, time to reorganise their farms.
Commissioner, thank you very much for your patience and I hope that you will extend your hand not to Mr Berlato, but to the workers who are looking at this Parliament in the hope it will not display double standards. I hope that nobody here will confuse what they would like to see with the real situation, and I also hope that nobody here will put their own interests above the interests of these humble people.
Doesn’t this conflict with the reference to Berlato in the final paragraph?. Or have I missed the point?
I am speaking on my own behalf and on behalf of my Group’s shadow rapporteur, Mrs Rosa Miguélez, in support of Mr Berlato, because his seems to be the most rational position.
Mr Berlato’s report deals exclusively with the Community Tobacco Fund, the Community Fund to combat smoking. He asks for more time and more money for this campaign. Therefore, even Members who are against premiums for tobacco should vote for this report, because it aims to extend the time and scope for the fight against tobacco.
However, the word tobacco arouses such strong feelings among many Members of this Parliament that they become confused. They confuse the Community Tobacco Fund with the community premiums and say we are asking to continue the premiums. This is not true. We are talking about the situation of the Fund until 2013.
They confuse production with consumption. The problem in Europe is not production. Europe produces very little tobacco. Europe’s problem is the consumption of tobacco imported from outside Europe.
They confuse tobacco with smoking. It is like confusing alcohol with alcoholism. The plant, which is an agricultural crop, has many uses, including medicinal, whereas smoking is an illness.
If they want to eradicate consumption, they should target their attacks much more on imports, manufacturing, advertising and the massive tobacco industry as a whole, rather than on the poor workers in my country, who only account for 5% of the tobacco smoked in Europe.
Finally, Commissioner, we are not funding tobacco for the sake of it, we are funding tobacco because it creates a lot of jobs, not only among tobacco producers, but throughout the districts concerned. In fact, many tobacco producers want to stop producing because they will earn more without working. However, the districts in question will go under if they lose these thousands of jobs for women and immigrants, as has happened in other areas of Europe."@en1
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