Commissioner, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I welcome the resolutions adopted by the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development even though I do not doubt that, in many areas, they do not go far enough. Having had the same experience with the foot-and-mouth disease report, I would also like to congratulate the members of the Committee on their tremendous hard work. It is hard work but an agreement must be reached. Much that has been negotiated, however, has still not been implemented. In addition, many of Commissioner Fischler's proposals, which I believe go in the right direction and in which there is very much that I can support, have unfortunately still not been fully implemented in all areas, something of which he is well aware. We should however stop breaking everything down and unravelling it all again because in the end, we can only negotiate the whole as a package. There is, of course, the World Trade Organisation, which requires that we observe certain rules. If one considers the governments that took part in the negotiations from 1986 to 1994 in the Marrakech Round and the Uruguay Round and which ones then signed the treaties at the end of 1993 or 1994, there were abstentions in many areas. Even though I come from Upper Bavaria, I do of course think that an increase in the milk quota is wrong. Many other price interventions have to be readjusted as well – rye is one of them – because everything cannot be ploughed up in one go or from one day to the next. That will not work. I would also like to make it clear that I support cohesion in the European Union and the shifting of funds into those regions and countries that have less, to help them to improve. I do not understand, though, why money that, for example, will be cut back from many operations that are in a higher grouping, should go back to the Commission for redistribution elsewhere. The bulk of the money should be used within the two pillars, according to the principle of subsidiarity, in the regions from where it originates. Otherwise, to put it bluntly, many will in reality be paying twice. Commissioner Fischler’s reforms are necessary and they would be necessary even without the entry of the ten accession states and without the World Trade Organisation because no one in this Chamber will seriously claim that the system is fair in terms of the way it has been managed up until now. It is not fair. Decoupling in the most widely varying of areas – and, as you and I know, this will one day be complete; it is a matter of time – will lead to greater fairness. It will not help however if everyone takes their region out and says that nothing should be done here and nothing should be done there. That does not begin to solve the problem. A few words on the developing countries: I am really glad that these have been discovered in the meantime. The ‘Everything But Arms’ initiative will not kill anyone or cost anything. We must however look at which countries are attempting to sell from the little that they produce because they need other vitally important goods. We must look into that. In the European Union, for decades, we have dumped our surpluses at a world market level and have forced them onto the developing countries and deprived many of their farmers of the capacity to make a living. We should also give some thought to that.

Political group: PSE