Brussels, 29/08/2001 (Agence Europe) - At its plenary session in Strasbourg, the European Parliament will have a debate on 6 September on the own-initiative report by Michl Ebner (Italian, EPP-ED) that turns to the implementation of Community legislation relating to mountain farming (Leader and Interreg programmes, since 1991, as well as 1975 Directive on compensatory payments to stem the exodus of the populations of these areas). The Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, which adopted the report in July, urges the Commission to: - present a communication in the course of 2001 setting out the European Union's point of view and actions in anticipation of 2002, proclaimed "Year of the Mountain" by the United Nations; - set up a comprehensive Community strategy for the sustainable development of mountainous regions in the EU and candidate countries, including regarding the safeguard of farming.
This strategy should, notably, provide for cross-border cooperation between mountainous regions (Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians, Balkans …) and establish specific measures in the framework of Interreg, Tacis, Phare and Sapard, "so as to enable the candidate countries and border regions to benefit from measures intended for mountainous regions". The MEPs also call on the Commission: - not to proceed with a generalised rise in milk quotas in these regions "in the sense that production is not a purely economic element but where small scale breeding is in fact necessary to preserve the countryside"; to provide for tutelage measures for races of cattle typical of the mountain; - to make no distinction between the cost of planting vines on the plains and on mountains for farmers who devote themselves to mountain wine production; - encourage participation by farmers in the creation of riches in the tourism sector by further backing "farm tourism".