Brussels, 07/02/2001 (Agence Europe) - The Greens and European Free Alliance Group has presented a 10-point plan for reforming and redirecting the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). "Instead of subsidising production, destruction and exports of surpluses, the new CAP must put emphasis on political concerns for the quality of foodstuffs, the conservation of natural resources and the development of the rural economy", states the paper, to which we shall return in greater detail.
Presenting this plan to the press, the joint presidents of the group, Finnish Heidi Hautala and Belgian Paul Lannoye, insisted on the need to take into account the lessons learnt from the BSE crisis but also from other scandals (dioxin, hormones, antibiotics) to put an end to the productivism logic and to redirect agricultural policy towards quality and consumer protection. German national Friedrich Graefe zu Baringdorf, Chair of the EP Committee on Agriculture, said that the "mass culling of healthy animals which is planned in the sole aim of making the market healthier is only one of the terrible aberrations of an agricultural policy that has totally failed". He mainly urged for a ceiling to aid in order to ensure greater equity between farmers as well as for measures in favour of organic farming. He said he was in favour of the establishment of a link between the granting of premiums and respect of environmental regulations. French national Danielle Auroi said it was not a matter of making "urgent cosmetic reforms, to continue with the same absurdities" but of a real "cultural revolution". "Multifunctionality must be something other than a simple G-string for European protectionism on the international scene", she added.