Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-24-Speech-2-060"
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"en.20020924.4.2-060"2
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"Agricultural subsidies make up a huge proportion of the European budget. This is a fact. For 20 years, I have been hearing that this proportion should be reduced, but this is an extremely slow process. As an MEP, it fills me with great sadness and I am extremely disappointed about the fact that Parliament still has no grip on the situation. When Mr Casaca then tries – at least based on the authority which we clearly have, which is a budgetary authority – to gain an overview of the whole subsidy scheme, we do not exactly receive satisfactory feedback from you.
It appears that you, as Commissioner, allow yourself to be fobbed off with what is being whispered into your ear by the bureaucrats who have accompanied you for so many years and who have for so long denied Parliament any direct input. After all, we want to gain a grip on agricultural policy, the export subsidies, and the way in which these subsidies are distributed. We would like to see an end to the exploitation of the developing countries. I fully concur with what Mr Bösch and Mrs Morgan said on this subject. When I was in Johannesburg, I was ashamed when I saw how, with our subsidies, we sound the death knell for a number of countries that have few resources to survive. There are a few countries that only have sugar to export, and we have managed to hold on to these wretched subsidies that we grant to our sugar barons thanks to our Member States.
Parliament has decided in the Committee on Development and Cooperation that this should stop. However, an amendment has crept in surreptitiously, upon which the plenary has yet again voted to maintain the agricultural subsidies for sugar. There are innumerable examples quoted here. As democratic representatives of our citizens, we would like a grip on these subsidies. Similarly, I fail to obtain an explanation for the way in which Europe manages to distribute unnecessary and harmful subsidies, while we are actually committed to solidarity with the developing world. I recently visited Botswana, where, apart from diamonds, they only have a few cattle to export. We concluded an agreement in this respect. There are so many African countries that wish to trade fairly with us, yet we still fail to create the opportunities for this.
Finally, I should like to point out that with regard to agricultural subsidies, export subsidies for live animals too are a disgrace and unacceptable to our public opinion. I am appalled to find out that you intend to increase these. Surely that is impossible. I should therefore like to concur with our fellow MEPs in their plea. I myself was a member of the Committee on Budgetary Control for a while, and I have great respect for my fellow MEPs and for their reports. I always read the reports with great interest, but I would finally like to see some change. In the final analysis, we are not here to keep the show on the road; we are here to create justice."@en1
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