Luxembourg, 14/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - Due to differences mainly of a budgetary kind, the Agriculture Ministers of the EU Member States did not reach a political agreement on new measures to combat salmonella and other zoonotic agents at their meeting in Luxembourg on Monday. 'I have reasons for being disappointed" by the result of this debate, said Council President Mariann Fischer Boel, who hoped a political agreement would be reached at the Council in November. While recalling that 160,000 people in the EU are affected by these diseases each year, and that on average 200 of them die each year as a consequence, Commissioner David Byrne said he did not have the impression that all Member States were treating this problem as seriously as they should.
Many Member states (including the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Finland, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Austria), as well as the Commission, said that they could very well agree to the Presidency compromise that provides, notably, for all control measures to be financed by farmers and agri-food industrialists. Opposite them, a group of five countries made up of France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal, and with a minority block vote, considered that expenditure stemming from implementing new programmes should be borne by the Community budget. They made of this request an issue of principle.
During the debate, French Minister Herve Gaymard, who placed emphasis on the very ambitious evolution of the new device being proposed, stressed that only a few Member states (especially Denmark) had managed to correctly implement the current programmes. According to him, before providing for new measures, they should first make an assessment of past experience (a remark also made by Spain and Portugal). The need for Community funding would be explained, according to Spanish Minister Miguel Arias Canete, by taking account of the criterion of "proportionality". Portugal notably leaded in favour of a more flexible timetable containing a transition period to "enable Member states to apply different measures depending on their priorities". He also called for the list of diseases covered by the control programmes to be reduced to two serotypes, against five according to the Presidency's compromise (and eight according to the Commission's initial proposal). France and Italy also recommended that the regulation be limited to the most important serotypes. Italy said that it did not agree with the current formulation and placed emphasis on the importance of providing for a transition period. Georgios Drys, for Greece, considered that the issue was not ripe and that his country could not agree to the compromise.
Speaking for the Netherlands, Cees Veerman strongly regretted the continued postponement of this ambitious work programme, and considered, as did his British and Swedish counterparts, that the responsibility for cost on food safety matters was up to producers (farms will have themselves to bear the costs for collecting and analysing samples, he stipulated). For Martin Willie, German Agriculture Minister, this proposal must especially respect the principle of budgetary neutrality. Only Denmark regretted that the measures being examined were not more ambitious.