WRITTEN QUESTION E-0932/98 by Giuseppe Rauti (NI) to the Commission (26 March 1998)

Subject: Italy's obligation to import rice

Will the Commission say whether and how it is assessing the increasingly serious situation facing Italian rice growers who are being greatly damaged by the Community's policies?

Italy has the most fertile rice fields in Europe in the areas surrounding Vercelli, Novara, Pavia and Milan (see Il Corriere della Sera of 17 February 1998). With a crop of 1 500 million kilos of rice cultivated over 232 000 hectares (including the rice fields of Ferrera, Mantua and Oristano), production is huge and is, at least enough to meet our domestic demand. However, the paradox is that, as a member of the European Union, Italy is obliged to honour agreements and concessions in aid of south-east Asian rice growers and we are having to stockpile our own rice in warehouses and stores with vast quantities going unsold and being spoiled instead of reaching Italian dinner tables.

Can the Commission therefore explain this situation in which - whilst the agreements are aimed at ensuring the expansion of trade in various products - in practice, third countries are regularly purchasing industrial goods from northern and central Europe but are 'harming' Italy, in particular, with their agricultural exports?

Answer given by Mr Fischler on behalf of the Commission (20 April 1998)

Italian rice production is of major significance because Italy is the largest rice producer in the Community. Production, which currently amounts to three times national consumption, has continued to increase in recent years.

Moreover, good weather has resulted in large harvests in all producer Member States, which makes the sale of Italian rice in the rest of the Community more difficult. This increase in Community output coincides with lower protection at the border as a consequence of the agreements concluded by the Community within the framework of the Uruguay Round. The combined effect of high production and increased imports has lead to difficulties in marketing rice produced in the Community.

As long ago as 1995, the reform of market organisation for rice sought to make Community rice more competitive by gradually reducing the intervention price over three marketing years and raising the quality of Community production through stricter criteria for rice bought by the intervention agencies and changes to the standard quality criteria. The Council fixed a limit on imports of rice originating in the overseas countries and territories (OCT) which enters the Community duty-free.

The Commission has taken and will continue to take all possible measures to support market prices and, as far as possible, to avoid having recourse to intervention. Thus the limits on exports with refund set by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) for this marketing year have been reached and considerable quantities of rice are being provided as aid to the most deprived in the Community, all possible ways of carrying out food aid operations have been used and ways of carrying out other food aid operations are being studied. All these measures are designed to improve the situation on the rice market and to reduce purchases by the intervention agencies as much as possible.