Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am certainly very reassured by the fact that no one in this House, nor in the European Commission or the Council, has considered the Belgian dioxin crisis to be a purely Belgian problem. It is indeed the case that enormous problems have arisen in Belgium and, of course, the European Commission was right to state that serious mistakes have been made as regards the Belgian situation. However, those of my colleagues who have got to know a little bit about the case in the meantime, are aware that the Belgian government has taken very drastic measures and can now give guarantees to all consumers throughout the European Union. Indeed the Belgian dioxin problem also points to a European problem and as such, of course, it has to do with the European internal market, with competition policy and with flawed agricultural policy. I must say, Mr Commissioner and Mr President, that I welcomed the measures just announced by you both, but I would like to remind you that a number of those measures were placed on the table by the European Parliament some time ago. In fact, they have been there since the Committee of Enquiry into mad cow disease finished its work. First and foremost, Commissioner Fischler, I do indeed think that the European legislative framework needs to be improved. You are quite right in saying that we need new quality standards. I should be pleased if a positive list was indeed to be produced and we were to stop undermining the legislation on account of pressure and lobbying from the agro-industry. Or are there really people out there who can make out a good case for recycled products and waste entering our food chain? Secondly, I wish to say something about the organisation of the European administration. My colleague Dagmar Roth-Behrendt has already said that we are of the opinion that food safety should remain under the control of the European Commission, and consequently also under that of the European Parliament. We believe that the European Commission should set up a service that is adequately staffed and has adequate finances but which above all, is also able to co-ordinate the controls undertaken by the national bodies and which is able to carry out its own controls, sometimes unannounced, on its own initiative, where and when it considers it appropriate. Mr Commissioner, I was particularly taken with your announcement regarding the legal foundation for a community initiative on food safety. It would indeed appear to me to be of benefit for action to be taken to prevent contamination of the food chain and to avoid public health disasters, without the bona fide farmers being the ones to suffer in the process. But to conclude, Mr Commissioner, Mr President, I should still like to emphasise, just as my colleagues have done, that we shall never be able to solve this food safety problem unless we undertake a radical and complete rethink of our agriculture and of our food production. We should not continue to give preferential treatment to large-scale agro-industry alone. In particular, we must support small-scale agriculture and healthy food production. As a matter of fact, I must say that I find it totally unacceptable that the Belgian farmers' union is refusing to co-operate on agricultural reform during this dioxin crisis, and on reducing the quantity of livestock in Belgium. Lastly, ladies and gentlemen, there are perhaps quite a number of arguments in support of setting up a European Committee of Enquiry as part of this European approach. I should just like to say that we must give serious thought to the matter before we come to a decision, and we must think carefully as to whether it would not be better to use the respective committees to continue our work.

Political group: PSE