Brussels, 18/01/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 18 January in Strasbourg, the European Parliament called for the future of a strong common agricultural policy (CAP) to be defended which could “meet the challenge of food safety”. By adopting the report by Daciana Octavia Sârbu (S&D, Romania) on the recognition of agriculture as a strategic sector in the context of food safety, the EP also called on the European Commission “to develop permanent and robust measures to urgently tackle the issue of volatility on agricultural markets”. Parliament is in favour of “more audacious European action to fight the problem of speculation, particularly by providing the supervision and regulation authorities with the task of reducing speculation”. MEPs consider that a global system targeting food stocks would be useful.
The EP has not adopted amendments to the draft report (see the detailed summary in EUROPE 10289) and has only struck out certain paragraphs. It therefore got rid of the sentence in which the EP “reaffirms its support for the programme supporting the poorest people in the European Union”. This was removed because of certain misgivings expressed by several countries (including Germany, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden), which consider that the distribution of foodstuffs to poor people should be within the remit of national social policies and not the CAP. In the context of measures aimed at alleviating the negative effects of market speculation, the EP gave its support to a revision of the current text on financial instruments. This is intended to enhance trading transparency. Nonetheless, it removed the paragraph in the initial report that also advocated “minimum thresholds for operators trading on these markets”. Another quite controversial sentence just managed to obtain a vote in support from the plenary and indicated that “50% of foodstuffs produced in the European Union throughout the food production, distribution and consumption chain is being lost through wastage”.
During the previous day's debate, the rapporteur Daciana Octavia Sârbu said that Europe was in no way sheltered from the problems linked to food safety. According to the United Nations organisation responsible for food and agriculture (FAO), food production must increase by at least 70% in order to respond to the increased needs of the world's population, which is expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050. The rapporteur also affirmed that food safety continued to be ensured through a strong common agricultural policy (CAP). The food safety objective could only be attained by resolving two of the biggest problems there are: market volatility and prices (strongly influenced by speculation on the primary materials markets) and the decrease in food stocks, added Daciana Octavia Sârbu. On the subject of volatility, the rapporteur advocates implementation of new instruments for fighting against extreme price volatility in the new post-2013 CAP.
World food stocks have reached a historically low level. They are at the equivalent of two weeks, which was the case during the food crisis 2007. This is why the rapporteur considers that “a global food stock security system would be useful”. Finally, the rapporteur pointed out that they needed to tackle the issue of young farmers. In the EU, only 7% of farmers are under the age of 40 and in 10 years time, 4.5 million will retire. According to the EP, it is therefore vital to encourage young people to enter the agriculture sector, set up new programmes and improve credit access conditions.
Speaking on behalf of the European Commission, Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva said that it was easy to criticise the CAP, although it helps to provide food at affordable prices and “this should remain to be the case… Price volatility should be tackled. We must have more efficient rules to regulate markets and tackle market disparities”. She admitted that it would not be easy to put in place a system for world food stocks and said that “we need to return to the subject and take into account the experience obtained by the EU food facility set up in 2008 which has been working in close collaboration in this domain with the FAO”. The G20 will discuss these subjects and the Commission intends to play an active role in the debate, concluded Commissioner Georgieva. (L.C./transl.fl)