Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-22-Speech-1-201"
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"en.20080922.28.1-201"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to express my pleasure at the fact that the Commissioner is also dealing with this issue, and I hope this will be reflected not only in his brief address but also in the work of the Commission, because we naturally have a duty to ensure that the actions of the European Commission duly reflect our wishes and ideas.
Anyone reading the title of my report, or rather the report of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, which adopted it unanimously, namely ‘Report on the situation and outlook for hill and mountain farming’, must realise that it represents only part of the actual content of the report.
This report says that we must formulate a policy for areas that cover up to half of the entire territory of some Member States, such as Austria, Italy and Spain, and more than a third of the territory of other Member States, for areas that are home to a total of 19% of the EU population. These are areas that may be described as uniquely disadvantaged in many aspects of farming and rural life and extremely vulnerable. The Alps, for example, feel the impact of global warming far more acutely than lowland regions.
Mountainous areas are disadvantaged in many respects as a result of steep slopes, weather conditions, erosion, height differences, high altitudes and rocky terrain. For this reason we need an overall strategy for these areas and not only an agricultural policy which has borne fruit and needs to be nurtured but which is not sufficient to deal with the problems affecting mountainous regions.
Old proven recipes therefore need to be preserved, but old and new recipes must be combined if agriculture is to be maintained as the lifeblood of mountainous areas, and other major factors must also be incorporated into this approach, namely a wide range of sustainable uses of natural resources, the creation and improvement of transport networks – not only physical transport but also Internet access and communications networks – the improvement and development of municipal and local services – which is made all the more difficult in these areas by the dispersed settlement pattern – and reinforcement of the social fabric.
New features must be added, such as a sharper focus on basic and continuing training, sensitivity to biodiversity in the landscape and the aforementioned adaptation to climate change. This report, which the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development adopted unanimously, devotes 13 recitals and 72 paragraphs to these matters. The aim is to develop a framework strategy on the basis of the existing sectoral efforts. For this reason, the report calls on the European Commission to develop an integrated strategy with a wide range of instruments within six months in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity and in harmony with the Member States’ national action plans.
I hope that the Chamber will give its assent in the same way as the Committee, and I ask the Commissioner to make our case to the Commission and to remind it that the contribution of the inhabitants of mountainous areas is made on behalf of the entire population and benefits them accordingly and should therefore be duly acknowledged. It is a contribution to the environment and to the value of our continent as a tourist destination, a contribution that must be taken into account because it serves as a guarantee against depopulation in regions such as Piedmont and Lombardy and parts of France and Spain."@en1
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