Mr President, I would firstly like to congratulate the Commission on their balanced proposal, both in the directive and in the regulation on the monitoring of zoonoses and zoonotic agents, which we will be voting on in Parliament tomorrow. These are matters of great importance for all EU States. For some EU States these are not only matters of great importance, but of the utmost importance. I would like to express my great concern at the result of the vote on the report presented in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, given that, in my opinion, it takes our concern for consumers’ health to irrational extremes. We are all worried about the health implications of salmonella – as Mrs Paulsen has just pointed out – even more so in countries such as Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal and France, that are particularly exposed to this danger due to the volume of livestock susceptible to infection as a result of average temperatures that favour its propagation and of another set of circumstances that are not worth going into now. However, I do not understand that, on the pretext of protecting consumers’ interests, some EU countries support the extension of control and surveillance measures to agents that cannot be transmitted to humans, in other words, non-zoonotic agents that do not fall within the scope of these regulations. The only types of salmonella that affect humans are salmonella enteritiris and salmonella tifimurium, and to extend Community regulation to other types, more than twelve, in fact, will only, in my opinion, cause serious commercial consequences that would penalise the aforementioned EU countries and small producers. Producers in northern Europe, where the incidence of salmonella is virtually zero due to the climatic conditions there, would not be affected by this move. Ladies and gentlemen, I therefore call on you to support the amendment tabled by the Group of the European People’s Party , which includes the sentiments of many countries that have expressed their concern in this regard in all the debates that have been held, both in Council of Ministers and Commission’s working groups. This amendment guarantees consumer safety, given that it includes all the improvements proposed by the European Commission, yet penalises no one. I regret that the report approved by the Committee on the Environment, Public Heath and Consumer Policy has not taken the main countries affected into consideration and I hope that this situation will be resolved, if not in tomorrow’s plenary, then in the negotiations in the next Progress Council and in the negotiations that will have to be undertaken as part of the codecision procedure, given that these measures will be hard to achieve. I also regret that there are a series of gaps that have not been sufficiently analysed in Parliament, such as, for example, the loophole mentioned in Article 9 of the Regulation, which anticipates the paralysis of trade in those countries whose national control programmes are not approved. This initiative could give rise to a situation of clear commercial discrimination. The report approved by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, in my opinion, has not been sufficiently tailored to the needs of each country and also falls into this trap. (The President cut the speaker off)

Political group: PPE-DE