Mr President, this is an own-initiative report on the interim review of Agenda 2000 in relation to the second pillar – rural development. We believe that rural development has to consolidate a multifunctional agricultural system across the Union, and that rural development therefore needs to be one of the European Union’s priorities. The first and second pillars are two indissociable instruments of the common agricultural policy and should, therefore, complement each other and be used for the benefit of a multifunctional agricultural system that will enable many farms to be maintained across the European Union. We think that the first and second pillars complementing each other is the only way of preventing a dual system of agriculture from being created within the European Union, with one type only looking towards the markets and depending solely on market aid while the other has its back to the agricultural markets and depends on aid that is disconnected from production. It is not and would not be a good model for the first and second pillars to be like two sealed and unconnected compartments and for all the multi-functionality to be concentrated in the second pillar, on rural development. Mr Fiori, as you have just referred to my report, I have to tell you that I think that your view is wrong and ultimately inefficient. Multifunctional agriculture must enable us to combine market management and management of rural areas and enable farms across the current and enlarged Union to exist and be viable. It is true that Agenda 2000 created the second pillar of the CAP, rural development, and we welcome that. However, we have to criticise the fact that it has a meagre budget: 10% of the total CAP budget is what we devote to rural development. We therefore ask for a greater budgetary allocation, a budgetary strengthening of this pillar, so that it can meet the challenges that it is faced with. We have also been unhappy to see that the uneven application of rural development measures by the Member States does not always produce a positive result for the rural areas of the Union. This is particularly the case for those areas that are most rural, most remote and which are lagging the furthest behind, which are not finding a truly satisfactory solution to these problems. We therefore propose that, without diminishing the powers of the national authorities, we should establish priorities under the second pillar of the CAP in order to move forward in defining a core of priority measures at Community level that guarantee sustainable development in the Union. We also propose that the Commission define a new typology for rural areas to enable us to set priority measures for each area and also to help us to apply different percentages of co-financing according to the various rural problems that exist in the Union. We ask that, as part of the interim review of Agenda 2000, there should be compulsory and uniform modulation of aid under the first pillar. Mr Fiori said that voluntary modulation has failed. There should, therefore, be compulsory and uniform modulation of aid under the first pillar, in order to use those freed-up resources, not only for the measures that we can currently use them for, the agro-environmental sector, early retirement and reforestation, but also for all the measures established in the regulations on rural development. We think that as part of this measure and in the interim review we should strengthen the eco-conditionality of aid and establish a link between the disbursement of direct payments and the provision of services within a multifunctional system, extending eco-conditionality measures in favour of sustainable development. We also ask for the Community support framework for rural development to be simplified through the creation, on the basis of the two EAGGF Guarantee and EAGGF Guidance sections, of a single agri-rural fund for the whole of the CAP. And on the occasion of this report in favour of multifunctional agriculture and of a different multifunctional agricultural policy, I would like to finish by asking for codecision for Parliament on agricultural policy.

Political group: PSE