Mr President, I think it useful to remind you that we voted on this proposed directive relating to cocoa and chocolate products at first reading in October 1997. In fact, therefore, the Council of Ministers has taken a great deal of time to reach an agreement on its common position, since it was not until October 1999 that this common position was available. It has taken two years, and I feel that opinion, and indeed the opinion of this House, has been overcome by weariness in relation to this matter, to the extent that a number of Members of Parliament – I should make it clear that this is the majority view within the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection – consider that this is a balanced compromise. The common position is a balanced compromise and we should seek not to change it too much! Personally, I find that it was Parliament’s vote at first reading that resulted in a balanced compromise, and I am deeply sorry that the European Commission did not in any way support Parliament’s position in its negotiations within the Council. At no time did the Commission take up Parliament’s amendments and indeed, during the debate within the Committee on the Environment, the Commission once again declared itself in favour of not changing this common position and, to put it plainly, of rejecting all the amendments. The Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection has, however, adopted two important amendments. I welcome these even though, in my opinion, they do not go far enough. To tell the truth, I feel that this is not an acceptable compromise and that the use of vegetable fats has been made an acceptable commonplace while not giving consumers sufficient information, ignoring the problem of the analysis method’s lack of reliability, removing subsidiarity and complying with the requirements of multinational chocolate manufacturers, while ignoring the concerns of small specialist chocolate-makers and SMEs, consumer rights and the future of the millions of farmers involved in cocoa production. I am thinking in particular of the cocoa producers of West Africa, numbering more than ten million, whose future has clearly been compromised. Why should I say that when there is a proposed annex in the common position which appears to answer the problem? It is true that there is an annex restricting the list of permitted vegetable fats to six substances, which include shea nut butter, which is a product gathered in some poor countries of Africa, such as Mali and Burkina Faso. Unfortunately, this restriction does not provide any guarantees for the future. Firstly, it is in fact possible to manufacture cocoa butter substitutes without shea nuts, and I have no doubt that such solutions are being investigated on the grounds of the cost and reliability of the product. Secondly, there are industrial processes, involving chemical or genetic engineering methods, which make it possible to obtain cocoa-butter equivalents, using a low-cost base material which is one of the six permitted, i.e. industrially-produced palm oil with a market price ten times less than that of cocoa butter. By setting the shea nut producers, who deserve our consideration, against the cocoa-producers, the proponents of vegetable fats, with the support of the European Commission, and I deplore this utterly, are concealing what I hold to be the undeniable reality, which is that the only parties to gain from the entry into force of the text proposed by the Council in its current form are the multinational chocolate manufacturers, whose aim is to increase their profits by favouring cheap vegetable fats and intensifying the pressure to reduce cocoa prices. I therefore think that a number of amendments tabled on the initiative of Members from various political groups, particularly Mrs Thomas-Mauro, Mrs Ries or Mrs Isler Béguin, are intended to re-establish the position which Parliament adopted at first reading and to give added value to the text. Let me cite, in particular, the compulsory identification of any vegetable fat content on the front of the product; the requirement for preliminary validation of a reliable analysis method; the principle of subsidiarity, which was removed by the Council even though it had been proposed by the Commission from the outset, the rejection of methods of genetic engineering and chemical methods – I would point out that the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection is in favour of rejecting the use of genetic engineering – and, finally, last but not least, a proposal for a serious impact study, which will not be carried out long after the directive comes into force but rather as soon as it comes into force, on the socio-economic situation of the cocoa-producing countries who are likely to be the first victims of this legislation. Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I feel that this is an approach which is in line with what we voted on two years ago. Admittedly, it conflicts with the Council’s common position, but I believe that Parliament’s role is to play a full part in the codecision process and not to bow down before the decisions of the Council, even if they are the product of a very long gestation period of two years.

Political group: Verts-ALE