Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-23-Speech-1-178"
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"en.20090323.21.1-178"2
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"Mr President, I should like to start by thanking the shadow rapporteurs in the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development and the four jointly competent committees of the European Commission with which we collaborated in depth in order to produce this report.
real producer prices are falling dangerously;
consumer prices are nearly five to ten times farm gate prices and, despite the reduction in inflation, consumer prices remain very high;
the degree of concentration in the retail trade and in other processing companies has quadrupled over the last five years and the concentration will increase as a result of the economic crisis and the bankruptcy of small- and medium-sized and local enterprises, a state of affairs that will make negotiations between producers, companies and consumers ever more difficult;
the malfunctions in the supply chain and its practices are evidently putting terms of healthy competition at risk
it is absolutely vital for there to be a coordinated European plan and integrated interventions in the food sector, from the farm to the fork. It would not be an exaggeration if the Commission's next intervention after the regulation and supervision of the financial system were to be in the food sector which, moreover, is also directly linked to the speculative moves of the said sector.
Citizens have the impression that it is the supply chains, the manufacturing industry and the retail trade which regulate the housewife's shopping basket and not the income policy of the state and of the European Union.
I therefore believe that, in voting for the report by the Committee on Agriculture and waiting for the final proposals of the European Union on this matter, we shall address the perennial problems of the operation of the food market, which in turn must also operate impartially for the benefit of European citizens, European farmers and developing countries and create a sense of security in the laws of the market and the institutions.
Commissioner, I should like to start by asking a very simple question: when consumers go to supermarkets to buy milk or yoghurt, why do they buy it? For the milk and the yoghurt or for the bottle and the tub? I put this question to you because the perception and attitude have been skilfully conveyed to consumers that they are buying a foodstuff where the industry that processes it, markets it and transports it is now more important than the agricultural product, the raw material itself. About 15 years ago, agricultural produce accounted for approximately 50% of the final value of the product; today it does not exceed 20%.
Farmers, both arable and livestock, are now ‘anonymous' persons for consumers. Their bargaining power, on the question not only of the final price but also of the preservation of the qualitative and nutritional elements in the final product, lags behind the role which they should have.
We are not attempting to draw dividing lines, to classify the productive sectors in the supply chain, the farmers, manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers as ‘the good’, ‘the bad’ and ‘the ugly’, because I do not believe that we are living in a ‘Wild West’ society and economy; I believe that we are living in an economy based on the regulations of the internal market of the European Union, a market which provides opportunity for growth and competitiveness when it operates transparently, but which ousts or eliminates producers and economic activities when unfair and opaque functions penetrate it.
The question we therefore have to deal with here today and in the future has two aspects:
firstly that of a rapprochement between consumers and producers through a quality policy in the food sector and by strengthening and jointly formulating ways of giving consumers more direct accessibility to productive agricultural areas and agricultural producers;
secondly that of safeguarding – and I do not mean determining – the income of producers and consumers through a transparent pricing policy which will include mandatory arrangements for controlling and supervising intermediate productive sectors along the entire supply chain.
Obviously here we mainly mean the small and medium-sized enterprises at local and national level, as well as the large parent and subsidiary companies based in Europe and the workers, which must operate on the terms of a transparent internal market and not on the terms of economic offshoots such as cartels and oligopolies.
Today, therefore, where (among other things):"@en1
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