Mr President, the Commission proposal recognises that the pigmeat market in the European Union is subject to cyclical movements, with periods of balanced supply and satisfactory prices followed by periods of plentiful supply when prices plummet. The periods of crisis are becoming worse and worse. The last one caused prices to fall by over 30% from mid-1998 to early 2000. The result is the disappearance of family holdings, whose only solution is to close down or to move into what is known as integrated production, in other words production in which the producers lose their independence as farmers and join a business structure – such as distribution chains or supermarkets – which dictates production plans to them in exchange for a certain economic stability. We have sometimes even wondered to what extent the cyclical market crisis itself may not be caused by the speculative action of these business structures, which thus gradually take control of the sector for their own interests. The Commission accepts that the only two ways to support the market – private storage and refunds – are insufficient to stave off the crisis, and yet it makes this timid and ineffectual proposal. Its lack of imagination and lack of ambition are amazing. Rather than a measure to guarantee producers’ incomes when prices collapse, it is more like a paternalistic piece of advice: save up in times of plenty so you can get by in times of shortage. What the proposal calls a regulatory mechanism consists of authorising a Member State that so wishes to establish a fund financed by those producers who join it on a voluntary basis for a minimum of five years, on the undertaking that they do not increase their stock. The contribution from the Community budget is nil, and the Commission confines itself to authorising the levy thresholds and the fund payments from within the management committee. The voluntary nature of the system means that the task of controlling production will be borne by only a few while the rest nullify this effect by producing without limit until the next crisis arrives. For all these reasons the Commission’s proposal is disappointing and we believe it is unacceptable. It does not solve the cyclical instability of the sector, it breaches the principle that the CAP will provide financial support and it is clearly an example of renationalisation and distortion of competences. Hence we back the report by our Socialist coordinator, Mr Georges Garot, and the amendments approved in the Committee on Agriculture. These turn the proposal into something very different by introducing, first, the compulsory nature of this measure for the Member States; secondly, Community cofinancing of the fund and the contribution of degressive launching aid; thirdly, Commission participation in crisis management measures; and fourthly, a broadening of the scope of this measure to cover piglet producers and closed-cycle holdings. Reference is also made to the need to encourage producer organisations, the prevalence of which varies greatly from one Member State to another. For the Socialists the amendments approved by the Committee on Agriculture provide an acceptable framework for the establishment of the proposed funds, and therefore if the Commission is not willing to accept these amendments, we ask it to withdraw its proposal, which in its present form has been rejected both by ourselves and by the sector.

Political group: PSE