Our position on LEADER is a product of our more general assessment of the EU’s overall agricultural policy. Both LEADER 1 and LEADER 2, which were implemented in the 1990s, were ingredients of the new CAP that emerged after its review in 1992 and, along with other respective measures, they constituted the so-termed second pillar of the EU’s rural development policy. Their real aim was to moderate and disguise the new CAP’s disastrous consequences and the disorientation of small and medium-scale farmers, and not to develop the rural areas or retain the agricultural population therein as was hypocritically declared in their objectives. This is proved by the fact that in the areas where those initiatives were implemented, farming incomes and employment decreased rapidly, which resulted in their depopulation. A characteristic example is Greece, which as an Objective 1 country was included as a whole in the LEADER Community initiatives, and where the average annual reduction in employment in the farming sector reached approximately 2.3%, while between 1994 and 1999 farming incomes decreased by 15.2%. We think LEADER + will be even more ineffectual than LEADER 1 and LEADER 2, for the following reasons. The real aims of LEADER + are the same as those of LEADERs 1 and 2, in other words to moderate and disguise the negative consequences of the CAP to be implemented in the context of Agenda 2000 and the WTO. The present CAP, however, is worse than its predecessor and it also starts from a worse basis, granted that the 1992 CAP review and the GATT agreement in 1995 have created serious problems and impasses for the agricultural economy. The selection criteria and the activities that are subsidised under LEADER do, in the best case, moderate some partial problems of the countryside, which are of secondary importance, but in the worst case they degenerate into expenditure for the sake of public relations and pandering to conscience. In no case, however, are they programmes for the integrated development of the selected areas and they do not create permanent jobs in the countryside because most of the activities there are not productive in nature. The actual appropriations available for LEADER + compared with LEADER 2 are smaller despite their increase by 15% (from EUR 1 775 million for LEADER 2 to EUR 2 020 million for LEADER +). This is because the 15% increase is nominal and not real, granted that average yearly inflation in the Community during those years was approximately 2%. LEADER + will last a year longer than LEADER 2. LEADER + can cover all the regions of the EU, while LEADER 2 covered only the Objective 1 regions and some Objective 5b and 6 regions. We must point out, however, that even if the actual appropriations available for LEADER + were increased, the Community initiative would still be ineffectual because such programmes cannot compensate for or blunt the anti-farming nature of the CAP that will be implemented in the context of ‘Agenda 2000’ and the WTO. The real outcome of such programmes is to act as a cover-up, to lead people off the scent and to salve consciences. We disagree with many of the report’s views. Once more, we point to the negative changes of the CAP (1992 – Agenda 2000). We do not think LEADER + will contribute substantively towards solving the countryside’s problems, which are characterised by the decline of farming, which was and should remain the countryside’s basic social and economic branch. For our part, we will tell the farmers about the expediency of these programmes. We will make every effort to improve them as much as possible and prevent them from being wasted, and most important of all, we will try to foster the struggle of farmers against the disastrous CAP which is disinheriting them and leading them towards economic decline and the desertion of the countryside. Unless this CAP is overthrown, no programme can ensure the survival of small and medium-scale farmers and the social and economic regeneration of the countryside.

Political group: GUE-NGL