European Parliament, Brussels, P9 CRE PROV
(2020) 10-20 (2-069-0000).
After a year and a half of inactivity, it is utterly incomprehensible
to me that it is now reckoned to set the voting on the Common Agricultural
Policy in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown. Over two thousand motions to
amend lay on the table. There is persuasive evidence that acceptable
compromises cannot be worked out in the committees. And so my speech today is
not for the members in this ostensible debate, but rather for the citizens and
farmers…since there is – as always – scarcely anyone present with whom to
debate.
Who wishes to know how successful the EU’s mismanagement of
agriculture has hitherto been need only look at the extinction of farms. In the
last twenty years, the number of farms in Germany has been halved. Many work in
a branch industry because it is not a sufficient living, because one cannot
support the investment in the ever more numerous requirements. Family farm
operations, allegedly to be defended, may soon belong to the past.
The new CAP – one need only look at the Commission’s brief
summary to understand where it is headed. In nineteen pages will be explained
how the farmer shall improve the environment and climate. According to the
Commission, of highest priority were the ever more ambitious goals of climate
defense which, contrary to differing statements, intend to govern national
agriculture policy ever more strongly and demand of the member states strategy
plans which are to be approved.
The farmer of the future: He may lay out hedges, plant
trees, sow flowers and create nesting grounds. Only one thing he shall no
longer do: Produce food, because that in the Commission’s view might be
responsible for species extinction and dirtying the environment. Meanwhile,
food is imported and thus consumer protection is annulled. For example, China:
There, 27,000 pesticides are permitted which find their way to us in the form
of processed food. In comparison: In Germany, only a thousand are permitted.
And the German farmer, beset with inactive unions and a
similar government of which the only priority is the Council presidency, pays
the bill for the EU’s distortions of competition – the latest victims are the
German sugar beet farmers – and with German tax money thereby finances his own
abolition.
[trans: tem]
