Mr President, this Parliament has been trying to make the European Commission aware of the increasingly worrying situation of European beekeeping since the end of the 1980s. In 1997, we managed to get the Commission to move a little, resulting in this ‘decaffeinated’ regulation to improve the production and marketing of honey, with an allocation of EUR 15 to 16 million, depending on the year, for all 15 Member States. The Commission has never acted on this Parliament’s unanimous requests to take more appropriate measures to save European beekeeping, such as the pollen-gathering premium. For several years now, beekeeping has been faced with new problems, in particular the loss of hives because when bees have gathered pollen from certain crops they lose their sense of direction and that is just as dangerous, Commissioner, as when politicians lose the plot. Since the Commission is turning a deaf ear to our repeated warnings despite the Council having explicitly asked it, on 18 February this year, to develop its action in this field in line with Parliament’s demands, we in the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development have had to ask for this oral question to be placed on the agenda with a debate and resolution on the new difficulties being encountered by European beekeeping, a resolution on which we will vote on 9 October. On 28 April this year, the Committee on Agriculture held a hearing on these new difficulties. In several Member States, beekeeping is in fact facing problems of large-scale mortality within bee colonies, especially in France, Mr Barnier. Among other things, this mortality is thought to be linked to the use of certain systemic insecticides present in the seed pellets of certain large-scale crops, principally sunflower and maize. Given that Article 174 of the Treaty on European Union, which is concerned with environmental policy, enshrines the precautionary principle as the founding principle, I think that this principle ought to be followed when there are both serious risks and uncertainties. As perhaps you know, Einstein said that if the bee disappeared from the surface of the earth, humanity would disappear two years later. We are therefore faced with a great problem today, as I said. Beekeepers in many regions of different Member States have been observing increased mortality rates among bees for several years now. The symptoms are different from those caused by the weather, for example, but they coincide with the use of new generations of neurotoxic systemic active substances used for pelleting on large-scale crops close to the hives. That is where the uncertainty lies: both the hearing we had at the end of April and the comments and statements by my colleagues on the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development show that scientists do not agree. I believe we must face the problem, not sidestep it. Let us set up a committee of experts to get us out of this uncertainty. Obviously, we need to avoid having double standards on the pretext of economic interests, interests which are massive, it is true: there are billions at stake. But neither politicians nor scientists should be controlled by the interests of the powerful financial groups that have been harassing us constantly, here and in Brussels, for weeks. The experts must work completely objectively and transparently, in a peaceful environment, and they must give us reliable and objective answers. I will not hide from you that this week I received a very interesting report from the Scientific and Technical Committee for the Multifactorial Study of Disorders of Bees, which is made up of eminent scientists. That report officially records the presence of doses of substances I previously mentioned as having been found in pollen. It has been reported to me that the firm Bayer itself, naming no names, was astonished by this new evidence. To quote just one of these findings: the use of Gaucho for pelleting sunflower seed results in a significant risk for bees of different ages. As with sunflower, the concentration ratio for the Gaucho pelleting of maize seed proves worrying given the consumption of pollen. Having said that, Commissioner, there is an urgent need for action to establish the real causes of the worrying rate of mortality among bees. In the meantime, our beekeepers need help, more funds to cope with this new crisis, whatever its origin. I hope that the Commission will move this time, that it will take our demands seriously, that it will see that serious studies are made to get to the bottom of this crisis. Meanwhile, as I said, we must take measures to prevent the disappearance of beekeepers with all the harmful ecological consequences that this would entail. That is why, Commissioner, we are asking the Commission to kindly give a clear answer to the three specific questions we have put to you in the course of this debate.

Political group: PPE-DE