The fact that we are discussing a report on the situation and prospects of young farmers in the European Union assumes very special significance in the light of the BSE crisis. What has happened since the well and truly hysterical dramatisation of the crisis in most of our Member States will surely do nothing to motivate young people to remain in farming, let alone encourage them to see their future in rural areas, where, as the report so admirably states, they have a very important role to perform in the social life of villages and rural communities, promoting and maintaining the countryside and contributing to the economic, social and environmental needs of the community, We have greater cause for concern about the future of farming in the European Union than ever before as a result of this mainly consumer-led crisis of confidence, given that the number of farmers under the age of 35 has been showing the sharpest decline for some time and now stands at 28% and that the percentage of farmers in the population of almost every Member State is falling. Our report contains all the most important and correct diagnoses as well as all the demands which have to be fulfilled if sufficient numbers of young people are to continue to see their future in farming. This is a list of demands to which not only the European Commission but also the Council and all the Member States must pledge themselves if they want to prevent the depopulation, desolation and decline of rural areas in the European Union and the accompanying exacerbation of our social and cultural problems. In the EU we need sustainable, high-quality agricultural production. We must defend and safeguard the designations of origin of our quality produce, such as our wines, in the wider world, including the World Trade Organisation, because our future in the European Union and that of our export trade depends on top-quality products, for which there is a prosperous and discerning consumer market within and beyond the frontiers of the Union. There is a tendency to put the blame for the present problems, and especially for the BSE crisis, on the agricultural community, which is expected to produce increasingly cheap food. Because I was a member of the Consumers' Consultative Council of the European Commission for many years, I should also like to refer here to the responsibility of consumer organisations, which, heedless of producers' incomes, have been pressing incessantly for lower consumer prices for food. Again and again in the seventies and eighties, and more recently too, they spoke out against the payment of appropriate producer prices in the framework of the common organisation of the markets in agricultural products. So they too are partly responsible for the industrialisation of farming, for the fact that cows have been turned into carnivores and that the right of farmers to receive proper reward for their efforts has been disregarded. This has to be emphasised in the present debate. I am an enthusiastic proponent of this report, because it contains and clearly enunciates all the things that are right and important for the preservation of family-owned farms in Europe, without which there can be no support for organic farming with its high-quality regional specialities, which consumers must learn to appreciate and for which they must be prepared to pay a fair price.

Political group: PPE-DE