Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2015-09-16-Speech-1-259-000"
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"en.20150916.16.1-259-000"2
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"Mr President, well, I am not going to be tearing anything up just at the moment. I would like to tear up your speech though, if I could read it, José.
All actions have consequences, and if you encourage people to have hopes that cannot be fulfilled then you will invite resentment and hostility. The European Union does this all the time. The EU unsettled the citizens of Ukraine and Russia retaliated with a ban on Western food imports. Who pays the price for this? Not the well-paid EU officials but farmers across Europe, who have lost a significant market, have found themselves in a situation of oversupply, and experience the inevitable crash in income. For – make no mistake – as Russia bulldozes illegal ham and cheese into the ground, the EU must appreciate that this is the consequence of its own actions. Severe punishment, of course, will be meted out by the Russians to those of its own citizens who facilitated the sanctions-busting – and God knows what they are going through at the moment – but again the EU officials will not feel the pain. The recently announced rescue package to agriculture to compensate farmers for their losses will do no such thing.
There is one glaring contradiction in the proposals. The Commission has promised farmers access to financial and risk-hedging instruments as part of the package. Farmers have always had these in the form of futures markets. However, the EU is, at this very minute, making participation in futures markets much more difficult in its MiFID II legislation. I have to say to you José – and Martin Häusling over there – that you have campaigned in the last six years for the abolition of futures markets in agriculture, and yet these help us enormously. Exemptions for farmers are essential if the tools are to benefit at all. So please do not promise what you cannot deliver. The EU has long pursued a policy of market intervention, generating hopes and expectations, which it can no longer afford. Responsible supply chain management is now required, and not handouts.
The failure to understand basic economics leads me to the new face in British politics. Until this month, Jeremy Corbyn made Herman Van Rompuy look high profile. And what is Mr Corbyn’s first action on food and farming? Well, he appoints a vegan – that is somebody who does not eat meat, milk or eggs – as the spokesman. I very much hope that the new Labour spokesman, Kerry McCarthy, comes to Brussels to brief Paolo de Castro and the Socialist comrades into her way of thinking. I would love to be a fly on the wall in that conversation. I hope the EU’s protesting farmers will, in turn, let her know theirs."@en1
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