Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner Lamy, thank you, Mr Miranda, for your excellent report. I too am pleased, despite the criticism I have concerning this initiative of the Commission. I feel that granting the least developed countries greater access to our markets is a first step in the right direction. Of course we in the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development would also have liked to be involved in the decision-making process from the outset, instead of having to decide on an objective that ultimately has already been decided. We hope that such matters will be settled differently in future. In principle, the Committee on Agriculture too welcomes this initiative, although of course it has formulated a whole range of reservations. There is perhaps a legitimate fear that, via triangular operations, more goods – such as sugar for example – could enter the European Union than these countries produce. This can be prevented, however, by giving individual countries a quota for the amount of sugar they can supply. This would be easy to keep track of, and also feasible using present-day methods. A fear repeatedly expressed was that goods would now enter the country that do not comply with our health and hygiene regulations. To this I can only say that we already have very clear European Union regulations regarding what food products may be imported into the EU at all. In my opinion – and this brings me to a more personal part – accepting this report was the right thing to do – for the Committee on Agriculture too. But in many respects the attitude adopted by the Committee on Agriculture is too protectionist for my liking. One need only look at what a tiny share of European Union trade these countries account for. These countries are dependent on a few products that they can export. It is right for the report to talk about ‘everything but arms’. That is precisely what we supply to these countries and what we are least likely to import from these countries, as they do not produce arms of the quality we require. I also believe that we have no need to fear being flooded with goods. I would have wished the Council to adopt the Commission's proposal to stick with the original three-year transitional period. I also feel it is important, however, that we support these countries in producing for their regional markets. In this regard I think it is slightly cynical of the Committee on Agriculture to include the motion that we have to keep an eye on these developing countries to ensure that they are not turning excessively to producing crops for export. Up until now virtually no one has really bothered about this. In the Committee on Agriculture I also saw motions to delete altogether the sentence stating that we welcome this initiative. I think this is regrettable, especially when one considers that the European Union represents a community based on solidarity that operates with large transfers of funds. Why then should we not give the poorest people in this world a certain transfer too? As I said before, I would have liked the Committee on Agriculture to take a much less protectionist stance. But there I shall leave it for the moment.

Political group: PSE