Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development Ordinary meeting
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AGRI European Parliament
Follow its sittingsBrigitte Mison
The proposed post-2027 CMO regulation takes this work forward through a new chapter, as you just reminded us, Chair, on the availability of agricultural supplies in times of crisis. Its purpose is to support the anticipation and management of serious supply disruptions while preserving the market orientation of the common agricultural policy. The proposal strengthens cooperation in identifying vulnerabilities across supply chains. It establishes a framework for national food security preparedness plans designed by Member States to reflect their own risks. It also gives the European Food Security Crisis Preparedness and Response Mechanism, the so-called EFSCM, a firmer basis in CAP legislation.
Since its creation in 2021, the mechanism has brought together Member States, EU institutions, and participants across the food chain, including national authorities, farmers, processors, retailers, and civil society. During a crisis, the Commission could request real-time information on stocks of certain key agricultural products and other relevant information. Let me turn now to what the proposal says about strategic reserves. First, the proposed CMO rules on establishing and managing reserves concern agricultural products. I'm stressing that it's about agricultural products.
Fertilisers and other inputs matter for food security, of course, but they are not covered by those legal provisions. The Commission is separately assessing stockpiling options for key fertilisers and inputs under the well-known fertiliser action plan. Second, the proposal does not create EU-level food stocks. The proposal does not create EU-level food stocks, nor does it require Member States to establish reserves. Whether to hold strategic reserves remains a national choice, in line with subsidiarity and national security prerogatives.
We know that several Member States have always been maintaining such strategic food reserves, and others have recently decided to do so or are seriously considering it. Third, where Member States choose to hold reserves of agricultural products, the proposal sets principles to limit market distortions, including foreseeing transactions at market prices. We must strengthen our ability to respond to emergencies without undermining the competitiveness of EU agriculture or the market orientation of the common agricultural policy. Such reserves are one possible preparedness measure for a severe emergency involving major supply chain disruptions. They are not, and let me underline it again, they are not the intervention stocks of the past, and they are not a means of regulating agricultural markets.
Our objective is to build a stronger culture of preparedness and cooperation without creating parallel structures or unnecessary administrative burden.
The Commission's role is to support Member States, coordinate, share information and act in solidarity so that Europe can respond more quickly and effectively when supplies are at risk. I very much look forward to hearing your views. Many thanks.
Daniel Buda
Înainte de a-i da cuvântul colegului Eric Sargiacomo, aș dori să spun bun venit reprezentanților Germaniei și Ucrainei din cadrul dialogului pentru politici în agricultură, inclusiv doamnei Verkhovna Rada din Ucraina. Bun venit în cadrul ședinței noastre. Iar acum dau cuvântul colegului Eric Sargiacomo pentru intervenția domniei sale legată de acest aspect care, iată, trebuie să fie reglementat și regăsit în regulamentul domniei sale. Vă rog, domnule Eric.
Eric Sargiacomo
Merci beaucoup, cher collègue président, madame Misson pour la DG AGRI, la Commission. Il est important d'organiser aujourd'hui cet échange de vues sur les stocks stratégiques alimentaires et je remercie évidemment les représentants de la Commission pour leur intervention, enfin son intervention. Avec la recrudescence des crises, qu'elles soient sanitaires, géopolitiques ou climatiques, que nous connaissons au moins depuis 2020 avec récurrence, qui finit par poser la question d'ailleurs si elles sont simplement conjoncturelles ou désormais structurelles, nous devons disposer de stocks stratégiques alimentaires. Ce n'est plus une option, c'est une obligation. Tous les pays européens aujourd'hui ont des stocks, enfin beaucoup de pays européens ont des stocks stratégiques en matière alimentaire, la Finlande ou l'Allemagne, et tous ont des stocks stratégiques en matière de pétrole depuis plus de 30 ans.
Je pense qu'il est grand temps que nous élargissions et généralisions la chose pour l'alimentation qui est évidemment un besoin essentiel des populations à l'échelle européenne. Le rapport Niinistö doit être une boussole et je salue l'ambition de la Commission européenne d'intégrer dans ce règlement OCM des plans de sécurité des approvisionnements et des stocks stratégiques. C'est une étape importante dans l'histoire de la PAC. Vous savez ce qu'on a pu faire des stocks durant ces dernières années, on nous les avons fait essentiellement disparaître, en tout cas à l'échelle européenne. Je observe que ce n'est plus un tabou et je m'en félicite.
En tant que rapporteur du règlement OCM, il me semble important d'élargir la question des stocks stratégiques à la constitution de réserves d'intrants et pas que. Nous savons également que les additifs pour l'alimentation animale sont un sujet préoccupant tant ils dépendent d'apports extérieurs. Depuis le blocage du détroit d'Ormuz, la situation est très compliquée en matière d'engrais pour nos agriculteurs et nous devons disposer de réserves d'engrais ou tout le moins ce qui permet de les fabriquer et je pense en particulier au gaz naturel pour les éléments azotés. En intégrant sur le sujet des stocks stratégiques alimentaires dans la PAC, nous faisons un pas important vers la création d'une véritable politique agricole et alimentaire commune. La PAC ne peut pas être réduite à une politique sectorielle au seul bénéfice des agriculteurs.
Au contraire, la stabilisation des marchés agricoles est à la base de la stabilisation économique et sociale et politique d'un pays, à la base du contrôle de l'inflation et à n'en pas douter dans les prochains mois nous connaîtrons de nouveau comme nous l'avons connu il y a peu encore un phénomène d'inflation particulièrement marqué sur les denrées alimentaires. J'aurai une question parce que tout cela demande aussi un peu d'argent. C'est bien de promouvoir une politique, de s'en remettre à la bonne volonté des États, mais quels sont les moyens derrière ? Et en particulier évidemment sur le fonds de compétitivité européen, je pense notamment à la capacité de réorganiser nos stocks, d'investir dans des capacités de stockage aujourd'hui désuètes.
Je prends la France comme exemple, les coopératives agricoles ont récemment chiffré le besoin à 4,3 milliards d'euros pour les investissements d'ici 2035 pour remettre les infrastructures de stockage à niveau. Donc cette question des besoins d'infrastructures est absolument vitale. D'autre part, je me demande comment on peut parler de réserves stratégiques tout en les gardant optionnelles. Est-ce que l'option est quelque chose qui fonctionne avec la stratégie ?
Herbert Dorfmann
Yeah, thank you very much, Chair. Ja, ich glaube, wir sprechen hier im Ausschuss sehr viel über Lebensmittelsicherheit, Food Security, und das ist, wie die Vertreterin der Kommission auch gesagt hat, durchaus wichtig, dass wir das Thema angehen und dass wir die Reserven, die die Mitgliedstaaten haben, verbessern. Und ich denke, der Weg, der hier vorgeschlagen wird, geht an und für sich in die richtige Richtung. Ja zu verstärkten Lebensmittelreserven auch in den Mitgliedstaaten, aber wir sollten nicht in alte Zeiten der Gemeinsamen Agrarpolitik zurückfallen, wo Stocks, also Reserven, angelegt wurden, um Mindestpreise zu garantieren. Da muss man nämlich im zweiten Satz auch sagen, wer bezahlt das dann ?
Da müsste man ein Interventionssystem wieder auf den Weg bringen, so wie wir es früher hatten und wo wir wissen, zu welchen Kosten das auch geführt hat. Also ich denke, das kann nicht Sinn und Zweck der Maßnahme sein. Also zusammengefasst, die Lebensmittelreserven sollten verbessert werden, die Mitgliedstaaten sollten dafür sorgen. Ich glaube auch nicht, dass es Aufgabe unseres Geldes aus der Gemeinsamen Agrarpolitik ist, diese Stocks zu finanzieren. Das ist nämlich ein Interesse der Gesamtbevölkerung, dass solche Stocks interessieren, und ist nicht unbedingt ein primäres Interesse der Landwirtschaft, sie zu bilden.
Also das ist ein Interesse in unserer Zeit, dass wir mehr Sicherheit für unsere Bürgerinnen und Bürger haben. Herzlichen Dank.
Daniel Buda
Thank you very much. Next speaker for Patriots, Gilles Pennelle, for two minutes.
Gilles Pennelle
Oui, merci beaucoup. Le retour des stocks stratégiques constitue d'abord un aveu, celui de la fragilité de notre sécurité alimentaire en raison notamment de notre dépendance aux importations. Une dépendance que la Commission européenne ne cesse pourtant d'aggraver en multipliant les accords de libre-échange au détriment de nos agriculteurs. Le meilleur moyen de réduire cette fragilité n'est pas de gérer la pénurie, c'est de produire nous-mêmes, dans nos nations européennes, les aliments dont nos populations ont besoin. Or, c'est précisément notre capacité de production que l'Union européenne a méthodiquement affaiblie.
Elle a exposé nos agriculteurs à des concurrences déloyales face à des produits qui ne respectent ni nos normes sanitaires, ni nos normes environnementales, ni nos normes sociales. Dans le même temps, elle a accumulé les contraintes et imposé le Green Deal, véritable feuille de route de la décroissance agricole européenne. Pour notre souveraineté, nous devrons produire chez nous, dans nos nations, ce que nous consommons. Aucune réserve stratégique ne remplacera jamais une agriculture forte, productrice et rémunératrice. Au demeurant, le projet aujourd'hui présenté par la Commission reste profondément lacunaire : aucun financement clairement identifié, aucune liste précise des produits concernés, aucun volume envisagé et aucune véritable obligation de constituer les réserves.
En l'état, ce stockage stratégique ressemble à une opération de communication, plus à une opération de communication qu'à un véritable instrument de sécurité alimentaire. Dernier point que je voudrais aborder, la Commission semble écarter une fonction pourtant essentielle du stockage : la stabilisation des marchés agricoles. Des réserves publiques correctement gérées permettraient d'acheter et de stocker lors des périodes de surproduction, lorsque les prix s'effondrent, puis de remettre ces produits sur le marché lorsque l'offre vient à manquer. Une telle politique contribuerait à garantir des prix plus stables et rémunérateurs. Cette stabilité est indispensable aux agriculteurs, mais aussi à l'ensemble de nos filières agroalimentaires et en définitive aux consommateurs.
Il est temps de redonner les moyens à l'agriculture de doter nos nations d'une véritable autonomie stratégique et par cette révision de l'OCM de donner les outils de garantir notre sécurité alimentaire.
Next speaker, Bert-Jan Ruissen for ECR.
Bert-Jan Ruissen
Dank u wel, voorzitter. Dit debat over strategische voedselvoorraden bepaalt ons weer eens bij het strategisch belang van de agrarische sector. Om in noodsituaties mensen te kunnen voeden, moet je inderdaad nadenken over voorraden en over back-up systemen als de reguliere distributie stilvalt. Maar om überhaupt voorraden aan te kunnen leggen, heb je toch echt boeren, de agrarische sector dus, nodig. Daarom mijn vraag ook vandaag: wordt het niet de hoogste tijd de voedselvoorziening en de voedselketen volledig als onderdeel van onze vitale infrastructuur te gaan beschouwen?
Je ziet dat voor energievoorziening en voor defensie dat er allerlei uitzonderingen worden geregeld om ze te beschermen. Zouden we voor onze voedselvoorziening niet een vergelijkbare aanpak moeten kiezen? En voor wat betreft die strategische voedselvoorraden zoals de Commissie die voor ogen heeft, hoe verhouden die strategische voedselvoorraden zich tot de voorraden die marktpartijen aanhouden, ook al in de huidige praktijk? Ik denk bijvoorbeeld aan aardappelen en uien die boeren en handelaren een tijdje opslaan om ze vervolgens op de markt te brengen als de prijzen weer wat aantrekkelijker worden. In dat soort situaties is het toch niet handig om in aanvulling op die voorraden die er al bestaan op de markt, om een aanvulling daarop nog eens te zorgen voor voorraden die worden betaald door de overheid.
Dan kun je toch op die manier zou je toch eigenlijk de normale marktwerking zomaar kunnen frustreren. Hoe ziet de Commissie dat? Ik denk inderdaad, zoals collega Dorfmann ook aangeeft, volgens mij hebben we geen behoefte aan terugkeer naar het oude marktinterventiesysteem. We hebben geen behoefte aan nieuwe melkplassen en wijnmeren. Dus daarom ook de vraag: hoe denkt de Commissie te kunnen voorkomen dat dit systeem uiteindelijk toch niet uitmondt in een systeem wat daarop gaat lijken?
Heel veel dank.
Thank you very much. Next speaker, Elsi Katainen for Renew.
Elsi Katainen
Kiitoksia puheenjohtaja ja kiitos komission edustajalle puheenvuorosta ja esittelystä. Aloite näin EU-tasolla on erittäin tervetullut. Viimeaikaiset kriisit ovat osoittaneet, että elintarvikehuoltovarmuus, varastointi, varautuminen ei ole vain maatalouden ja ruokaturvan asia. Se on myös turvallisuuskysymys ja osa strategista puolustusta. Meillä Suomessa strategiset elintarvikevarastot ovat olleet kansallinen painopiste jo vuosikymmenten, vuosikymmenten ajan.
Pohjoinen sijaintimme, pisin yhteinen raja Venäjän kanssa ja pitkät etäisyydet ovat tehneet varautumisesta ja huoltovarmuudesta tärkeän osan meidän turvallisuusstrategiaamme.
Tämä pitkäaikainen asiantuntemus oli yksi syy siihen, miksi komissio pyysi entistä presidenttiämme Sauli Niinistöä laatimaan raportin Euroopan huoltovarmuudesta ja varautumisesta. Raportissa elintarvikevarastot tunnistettiin yhdeksi kriittisistä resursseista, joiden saatavuus ja turvallisuus on varmistettava kriisitilanteissa. Meidän mallimme perustuu ennen kaikkea kotimaisten raaka-aineiden varastointiin valmiiden elintarvikkeiden sijaan. Siis raaka-aineita. Tämä tuo kriisitilanteessa joustavuutta ja mahdollistaa sen, että elintarviketeollisuus voi mukauttaa tuotantoaan tilanteen ja tarpeiden mukaan.
Varastomme on myös hajautettu eri puolille maata, eivätkä sijainnit ole suinkaan julkista tietoa. Haluankin nostaa ehdotuksen valmisteluun edetessä muutaman huomion. Ensinnäkin strategia tulisi koordinoida nimenomaan EU-tasolla, mutta sen toimeenpanon tulisi säilyä ensisijaisesti kansallisilla tasoilla. Näin voimme hyödyntää jäsenmaissa jo olemassa olevia järjestelmiä ja asiantuntemusta sen sijaan, että loisimme niiden rinnalle uusia rakenteita. Toiseksi meidän tulisi tunnistaa raaka-aineiden varastoinnin merkitys.
Ne tarjoavat enemmän joustavuutta kuin pelkkä valmiiden tuotteiden varastointi, erityisesti pitkittyneessä kriisissä. Ja lopuksi meidän on varmistettava, etteivät EU-rahoitukseen liittyvät avoimuusvaatimukset vaaranna näiden varastojen turvallisuutta. Kiitoksia.
Next speaker Thomas Waitz for Greens. Please Thomas.
Thomas Waitz
Thank you chair and for all the farmers that have been listening, I just want to recommend to listen to Mr. Penel's announcement here. He likes to scream that he's for fair prices for production goods of farmers, but when it comes to that kind of proposal like stocks that can help to ensure some protection against volatility of prices on the market, he's against, just for all the ones that are listening. But my actual question is towards the Commission. You were well portraying that this is basically based on national stockpiling, that your proposal basically means you just want to gather the information. But you also said, and if I was able to follow rightly so, I mean the security of supply is important in times of especially security crisis.
But usually the problem is not that we don't have enough grains on the market, but the question is at that is at stake is the volatility of prices. Could you just react on that? And based on that, the biggest impact on the volatility of prices beyond the illegal war of Russia against Ukraine, beyond the exports and terminals that are destroyed, beyond the question of Hormuz and so on, the biggest impact on the volatility of prices is food speculation. And here I'm not talking about contracts about also harvests, but about the speculation on rising or falling prices on stock markets or call them, I don't know, food price casinos. This is the biggest impact and there we regularly see that consumers, that farmers, but also processors are kind of taken hostage by the wish of parts of the financial markets to make revenues in a casino, to make profits on the back of farmers, consumers and processors.
Wouldn't it be the more important step to stop speculation on food prices because that would not cost us additional taxpayers' money and would serve us much better than stockpiling, especially when it comes to price controlling the prices? When it comes to security stocks in terms of security crisis, I'm all in that we need this up to a certain extent. There I follow my former speaker Elsi Katainen. Thank you.
Daniel Buda
Thank you very much. And the speaker Luke Ming Flanagan is not here.
Ivan David, the same, is not here. Next speaker, Mr. Köhler, for one minute, please. Please.
Stefan Köhler
Sehr geehrter Vorsitzender, vielen Dank fürs Wort. Ich hätte an die Kommission folgende Frage, wie denn der aktuelle Sachstand ist. Sie haben gesagt, es gibt eine Expertengruppe, aber wo stehen wir denn eigentlich? Haben wir denn eigentlich schon Läger? Sind die privat, öffentlich?
Wie groß muss die Kapazität sein? Kollege Sarvamaa hat gesagt, da muss viel noch investiert werden, weil einfach die Kapazität nicht ausreicht. Und dann würde mich mal interessieren, welche Güter denn eingelagert werden sollen. Sind das hauptsächlich Trockenprodukte, Getreide und Hülsenfrüchte oder ähnlich wie bei der GMO schon verarbeitete und verzehrfertige Produkte? Wie sieht es mit Fleisch aus?
Haben wir genügend Kühlkapazitäten? Das würde mich interessieren und da hätte ich gerne viel konkretere Zahlen. Vielen Dank.
Next speaker, Mr. Dömötör, please, one minute.
Csaba Dömötör
Tudjuk-e, hogy mekkora stratégiai tartalékokkal rendelkezik az Európai Unió havi fogyasztásban kifejezve? Másfél hónapnyival. Az Egyesült Államok ezzel szemben nyolc havi, Kína pedig tíz havi mennyiséggel rendelkezik. Ez egyenes következménye annak, hogy teljesen lebontották a korábban jól működő intervenciós intézkedéseket. És miközben ezt megtették, az uniós piacok külső védelmét is leépítették.
A szabadkereskedelmi megállapodásokkal soha nem látott mennyiségű mezőgazdasági termék juthat be vámmentesen. Másfelől lehet, hogy a Bizottság szavakban legalábbis felismerte az élelmiszerbiztonság jelentőségét, csak hát itt a döntések számítanak. Azon belül is az, hogy 20 százalékkal akarják csökkenteni az agrárkasszát, abból pedig nem lesznek nagyobb stratégiai tartalékok. Csak merjük remélni, hogy a Bizottság nem arra alapozza az élelmiszerbiztonságot, hogy a harmadik országokból majd úgyis érkezik elég import. Az energiaellátási vitákból látjuk, hogy ez végzetes kiszolgáltatottságot jelentene.
Szóval, hogyha nagyobb stratégiai készleteket akarnak, akkor ne vágják meg az agrártámogatásokat. Köszönöm.
Christine Singer
Vielen Dank, Herr Vorsitzender. Wir sprechen über strategische Lebensmittelvorräte. Aus meiner Sicht müssen wir den Blick aber bei dem Thema weiter fassen. Es geht nicht nur darum, Lebensmittel einzulagern. Entscheidend ist, ob unsere heimische Landwirtschaft und die gesamte Lebensmittelkette auch in der Lage sind, wenn eine Krise stattfindet, dass sie weiter produzieren, verarbeiten und auch liefern können.
In Bayern haben sich gerade mehr als 16.000 landwirtschaftliche Betriebe an einer Umfrage zur Krisenfestigkeit beteiligt. Und dabei geht es um Fragen wie zum Beispiel Energie- und Wasserversorgung, Futter, Kraftstoff, Kommunikation oder auch Logistik. Das zeigt für mich, dass Krisenvorsorge nicht am Hoftor enden darf. Wir müssen die gesamte Kette im Blick haben, also vom Bauernhof über Verarbeitung und Logistik bis zum Handel und zum Verbraucher. Deshalb zwei Fragen.
Die EU-Bevorratungsstrategie sieht eine Koordinierung mit den Instrumenten einer gemeinsamen Marktorganisation vor. Was bedeutet das konkret? Können dabei beispielsweise bestehende Lagerstrukturen genutzt werden, die wir heute bereits im Rahmen der GMO zur Marktstabilisierung haben? Und wie stellt sich die Kommission die Aufgabenteilung zwischen staatlichen Stellen und den privaten Akteuren entlang der Lebensmittel konkret vor, zum Beispiel auch der Lebensmitteleinzelhandel? Welche Rolle spielt der?
Denn am Ende geht es nicht allein um gefüllte Läger, sondern um eine Versorgungskette, die auch in Krisenzeiten funktioniert. Dankeschön.
Mrs. Maestre, please.
Cristina Maestre
Muchas gracias, presidente. Efectivamente, Europa guarda petróleo y gas para más de tres meses y, sin embargo, no tiene reservas estratégicas de alimentos en tiempos como los que vivimos. Los tenemos en el campo y de aquella manera, pero mientras tanto nuestros agricultores ni siquiera saben si van a poder tener acceso a los fertilizantes o no los tienen al menos garantizados para toda la cosecha. Por lo tanto, pedimos reservas, sí, pero europeas. Y escuchando a la Comisión, da la sensación de que se vuelve a lavar las manos y que siguen sin tomarse en serio lo que significa los alimentos como producto estratégico y la agricultura como sector necesario que tenemos que proteger y blindar.
Por eso, yo creo que el hecho de que la Comisión Europea se erija como un mero coordinador me parece un error en el que vuelve a insistir la Comisión Europea. Y por eso yo creo que vale, teniendo en cuenta que cada Estado miembro va a decidir lo que va a reservar, quienes lo hagan, que no va a haber la información oportuna por más que quieran coordinar la transparencia y que no va a haber ninguna medida ni siquiera de arbitraje en condiciones por parte de la Comisión Europea, pues me parece que no está del todo bien enfocada la situación dada las circunstancias que tenemos.
Ciaran Mullooly
Thank you, Chair. When we discuss strategic food reserves for European citizens, I feel perhaps we should firstly discuss our capacity to produce food within Europe. Over the last ten years, our EU population has increased by approximately eight million people, but during broadly the same period, our livestock population has moved sharply in the opposite direction. Cattle numbers have fallen by almost 10%, pigs by 9%, sheep by 12%. So we have eight million more people, but significantly fewer livestock producing food within the Union.
That raises a fundamental question for me about our long-term security. Is the Commission concerned that we're allowing our own food production capacity to actually decline while becoming increasingly reliant on food produced outside the European Union? Strategic food reserves are important, but surely our greatest strategic reserve is maintaining the capacity of European farmers to produce the food. One question to finish: what concrete plan does the Commission actually have to reverse this decline and protect Europe's long-term capacity to feed its citizens?
Thank you very much. Next speaker, Mr. Bassamer.
Arno Bausemer
Ja, vielen Dank. Also sollte uns allen ja nun am Herzen liegen, dass wir die Versorgungssicherheit aufrechterhalten, aber wir werden das nicht mit Planwirtschaft machen, sondern mit vernünftiger Marktwirtschaft. Und ich verstehe auch nicht, wie durch eine Kürzung von 20% der Beihilfen, wie durch eine Degression, eine Kappung, es überhaupt geschafft werden sollte, dass Landwirte in irgendeiner Form ermutigt werden, mehr zu produzieren. Das macht also keinen Sinn, deswegen wäre meine Frage jetzt ganz simpel an die Kommission, ob diese Pläne zur Degression und Kappung mittlerweile überdacht worden und vielleicht beerdigt worden sind. Und eine zweite Frage, was die Vorredner angeht, da stelle ich mir das auch ein bisschen schwierig vor, inwiefern wir die Kommission das koordinieren.
Will man jetzt den Nationalstaaten Vorschriften machen, will man den Staaten, die es möchten, da eine Hilfestellung geben, das wäre ja in Ordnung. Und vor allem, wo sollen diese Lagerflächen oder Lagerplätze herkommen? Will man da jetzt Kühlhäuser in Größenordnung ankaufen, verstaatlichen? Die Linke will ja in Berlin regieren, also es würde in die Richtung gehen wie der Planwirtschaft, oder wird das soll das eine Art Hilfe sein? Also eine dirigistische Anordnung von oben wird die Marktwirtschaft eher noch mehr schädigen und wird noch mehr Landwirte in den Ruin treiben, deswegen sollte man das dringend lassen.
Vielen Dank.
Daniel Buda
Da, mulțumesc foarte mult. Înainte să dau cuvântul Comisiei, câteva scurte considerații aș dori să fac legat de acest subiect. Eu cred că este foarte important să înțelegem că nu discutăm aici de niciun fel de stoc pentru intervenție pe piață. Aici discutăm de rezerve strategice care vor putea fi disponibilizate și mobilizate în situații de criză, ca să fie foarte clar, în opinia mea, limitele discuției. Nu ne putem permite să ne întoarcem din nou, așa cum au spus foarte mulți colegi, din nou la munți de alimente.
Pe de altă parte, trebuie să conștientizăm că da, Uniunea Europeană are în momentul de față o problemă sau poate avea o problemă în momentul în care apar crize, fie generate de război, fie de altă natură. Și vă dau câteva date pe care le-am colectat, în speță în Finlanda există stocuri pentru nouă luni de zile, în Suedia pentru trei până la șase luni de zile, în Germania sunt 10 kilograme de cereale care sunt stocate și în restul statelor este pauză legat de ceea ce înseamnă informațiile pe care le avem accesibile publicului. De aceea eu cred, și aici întreb Comisia Europeană, are în vedere să coordoneze aceste stocuri strategice care să fie măcar într-un procentaj pentru populațiile din statele membre? Pentru că dacă mai apare o criză în România, să nu dau exemplu alt stat, o să mă duc în Finlanda care are alimente pentru nouă luni de zile și o să iau de acolo alimentele sau o să mă duc în Germania sau unde mă duc? Adică e o chestiune care, în opinia mea, trebuie să fie înțeleasă la un nivel adecvat.
Ne pregătim cu aceste stocuri strategice pentru situații de criză, fie război, fie schimbări climatice pe care nu le putem gestiona în mod adecvat, cum ar fi seceta, care uitați-vă ce a însemnat pe producțiile de porumb, cât de mult au scăzut în acest an. De aceea întreb Comisia Europeană, are în vedere totuși a stabili niște stocuri minime pentru fiecare stat membru, repet, care să nu fie stocuri de intervenție, ci să fie stocuri care să garanteze securitatea alimentară în caz de criză? Și acum dau cuvântul Comisiei Europene pentru a răspunde întrebărilor colegilor.
Brigitte Mison
Thank you, Chair, and thanks to all the honorable members who have taken the floor. It was very enlightening, everything that you have brought to this table. It shows also your strong interest in food security and preparedness. I've listened very carefully to your views, and I think I can say that there is a broad agreement on the need to prepare better for major disruptions to agricultural supply chains. Some of you have made the distinction between preparing reserves or having good functioning supply chains.
I think this is a very valid point. I welcome your engagement from all of you with the proposed chapter in the common market organization on the availability of agricultural supplies in times of crisis. I realize that there is a need for explaining more what we have in mind there. Let me maybe start by coming back to three points. The first one, you're right, we need a clearer picture on supply chain vulnerabilities.
We need better information sharing and practical national food security plans that reflect risks for each member state. You're fully right. Maybe let me draw your attention to the tool that we have for that, that is called the EFSCM.
It's a forum where public authorities are brought together with those who produce, process, distribute food. And that allows me also to respond to one of the questions. The production, processing and distribution of food is indeed identified as a critical entity at European level. So yes, we have identified those as critical entities. So strengthening the role of the EFSCM is in our view crucial.
It will help us recognize warning signs earlier and respond more coherently. The second point I would like to come back to is the responsibility of Member States. Yes, they should remain responsible for deciding whether to establish strategic reserves of agricultural products. What we propose, what we ask you to give us the right to do with the CMO proposal, it's not to create EU food stocks, nor to oblige any Member State to hold reserves. Why?
Because national circumstances differ and national food security plans should reflect those differences. What is our EU added value in that? It is to improve coordination, transparency and solidarity across the single market. And that allows also me to answer some of the, for some of the points. Yes, we will ask full transparency on what Member States have in their plans.
Yes, we will ask for solidarity, and that answers your question, Chair, when there is a problem specific for one Member State, yes, we will ask for solidarity across the single market. The third point I would like to come back to is that preparedness must remain consistent with a market-oriented Common Agricultural Policy. Where national reserves exist, and we know, it is public information as the Chair said, we know that such national reserves exist in a number of Member States. Clear principles are key to help prevent their purchase, management or release from distorting markets. Because we have to be conscious about that, we have to take care of that within the Common Market Organization.
So that's why transactions at market prices are a very important part of our approach. Those strategic reserves, they are intended for severe emergencies involving major supply chain disruptions. They serve a different purpose than intervention stocks that are used to, or that were used, I have to put it in the past, to manage markets. So we should absolutely not recreate the problems that those stocks have caused to the competitiveness of European agriculture. So how can it work and how do we see that it work in some Member States that have those national reserves approach?
Some indeed constitute national food stocks, and you really have in those Member States food quantities that are purchased by the state. But you have also other organizations that rely on the supply chain and that require private operators to have a certain level of stock that the state could mobilize in case of major disruptions. So you have a mix between state-owned and private-owned reserves. What counts is the efficient and quick mobilization of those stocks when a crisis emerge.
When a crisis emerge and what counts as well on which we ask for empowering us to do it is to have full transparent information on that on the ground to be able to reassure European citizens that yes we are prepared, yes there is solidarity and yes we will respond in case of an emergency. What's going on in the commission expert group, there are various expert groups, what I can tell you about the EFSCM is that you have the variety of actors, public actors, private actors and that they are able to convene at very short notice. We had for instance a very short notice meeting when the crisis emerged on fertilizers. And we could count on the goodwill of those various actors to share information, to try to come out of polarization speculation that was also mentioned earlier today and really talk clearly about what is the situation. Do we have fertilizers for the current harvest, I'm talking about spring, do we have problems for later on, what can we do, how can we arrange it.
I said the CMO is about agricultural products, it's not about fertilizers. It means that we do not necessarily need to have an anchor in the CMO legal basis to be able nevertheless to coordinate what happens on inputs. Some of you have mentioned also feed additives and we count also on that structure to make transparency coordination to make sure that farmers have what they need to produce so that European citizens can eat every day whether we have a crisis or not. So I hope that I have replied to all your questions. I would like again to thank you sincerely for your support.
It's very important to see that you are also strong on this commission work for food security. It is essential and we really look forward to continuing our close and constructive work with this committee as the proposal is examined of course at your level as well. Many many thanks.
Daniel Buda
Mulțumesc și noi doamnă director pentru explicațiile furnizate, fără discuție este un subiect care cu siguranță va mai reveni în dezbatere deoarece vedem că sunt diferențe majore între statele membre, unele care tratează aceste stocuri și aici trebuie să fie gândite strict în logica garantării securității alimentare și nu într-o altă logică ca să fie foarte clar și unele state vedem că tratează această chestiune asigurându-și independența să spun așa pe timp de mai multe luni în timp ce alte state își creează doar niște punți până când se vor se va restabili aprovizionarea. Ori eu cred că aici trebuie ca dumneavoastră să coordonați această acțiune la nivelul statelor membre pentru că nu putem să avem doar o țară care să fie fericită și altă țară care să fie în dificultate în astfel de de momente. Dar am înțeles mulțumim tare mult pentru pentru observații. Mergem așadar stimați colegi la următorul punct, avem un schimb de opinii cu comisia privind siguranța alimentară, trasabilitatea și importul în Europa. Ne îndreptăm atenția spre ceea ce înseamnă aceste audituri efectuate de către Comisia Europeană, în special auditul efectuat în Brazilia pentru a evalua controalele privind prezența reziduurilor de substanțe farmacologice active, pesticide și contaminanți în animale și în produsele de origine animală precum și măsurile corective propuse.
Îi urez în acest context bun venit domnului Eric Thévenard, director pentru audituri și analize în materie de sănătate și alimentație în cadrul Direcției Generale de Sănătate și Siguranță Alimentară DG SANTE care va prezenta constatările raportului de audit și va răspunde întrebărilor noastre. Comisia noastră este foarte dornică să afle mai multe date despre constatările auditului și despre aplicarea măsurilor corective.
Suntem de asemenea interesați să știm cât de eficient sunt protejate frontierele Uniunii Europene împotriva intrării produselor care nu respectă legislația Uniunii. Domnule Tevanar, vă dau cuvântul pentru opt minute, după care voi da cuvântul coordonatorilor și membrilor Comisiei AGRI, iar la sfârșitul discuției, evident că veți avea posibilitatea și în același timp plăcerea, aș spune eu, să răspundeți la întrebări. Așadar, domnule Tevanar, aveți cuvântul pentru opt minute.
Eric Thévenard
Dear Mr. Chairman, dear honorable members, thank you for the opportunity to intervene from Ireland, where the Commission's Directorate in charge of food and veterinary audits is located. As you know, the EU has a comprehensive set of rules governing the controls of animals and products entering its market from trade partners. To export food of animal origin into the EU, third countries must now be included on four lists, each covering a specific requirement. Animal health, of course, as countries must be able to control animal diseases on their territory. Food hygiene, as regards their capacity to ensure hygienic processes throughout their food production chain.
The control of residues of chemicals or contaminants in foodstuffs that are intended to be exported to the Union. And to stay on that list, actually, third countries must every year submit their control plans for residues and the results of the previous year's testing for evaluation by the Commission, actually by my colleagues. And since this year, a fourth list requires trading partners to ensure that animals throughout their lifetime are not given any antimicrobials for growth promotion or yield increase, or antimicrobials that the EU reserves for human use. In addition, the authorities of third countries must sign health certificates guaranteeing that the products exported into the EU meet the EU conditions and come from establishments compliant with EU requirements. Prior to entering the EU market, products from third countries are checked at EU borders.
They undergo there documentary, identity, and physical checks at EU border control posts, which are located at EU borders, in ports, in airports, or on roads. The EU is equipped equally with IT systems, notably TRACES, to ensure that previously rejected consignments cannot enter the EU via another entry point. Furthermore, an entry document produced by the border control post accompanies the products once they are accepted to enter the EU market. EU food safety standards are upheld through this robust system of import controls and also through regular audits that are followed by corrective actions whenever non-compliance is identified. Reflecting the Commission's vision for agriculture and food and also under the political guidance of Commissioner Várhelyi, the program of audits has been expanded significantly as regards import controls.
When comparing with 2025, the first year of this college, the number of audits conducted on border control posts will have increased by 33% in 2026 and 60% in 2027. Equally, the number of audits planned in third countries will have increased by 50% in 2026 and by 100% next year.
Now, I understand that you would like me to specifically brief the committee on one of those audits that was carried out last year in Brazil linked to the use of estradiol in cows. In fact, this audit takes its origin in a previous one carried out mid-2024 on the chemical safety of food of animal origin from Brazil. The audit in 2024 evaluated the controls on residues of pharmacologically active substances, pesticides, and contaminants in animals and animal products. It covered the main commodities for which Brazil was listed for export to the EU at that time, this means beef, poultry, and honey. For beef, Brazil has a segregated production system where a distinction is made between on one hand meat for the national market and on the other beef for export to the EU, which must obviously comply with the EU food safety rules.
The audit included verification that the EU ban on imports of beef, sorry, derived from animals treated with hormones is effectively respected by Brazil. The audit found that like the EU, Brazil banned the use of hormones and beta-agonists for growth promotion in bovine animals. However, whilst banned in the EU, estradiol is allowed in Brazil for therapeutic or zootechnical purposes in female animals. Within its segregated production system, Brazil has put in place a requirement for operators to issue sworn statements guaranteeing the non-use of estradiol in female bovines, meat from which is intended for export to the EU. This 2024 audit concluded that the official controls in Brazil could not fully verify and guarantee the reliability of operators' sworn statements.
For this reason, a corresponding recommendation was made in the audit report. The other less critical recommendation concerned the validation of analytical methods used in Brazil laboratories. So Brazil provided an action plan to address both these two recommendations in response to the draft audit report. In it, it committed to suspend exports of meat from female bovine animals to the EU until it has implemented additional guarantees that female animals whose meat is to be imported to the EU have never been treated with estradiol. The Brazilian action plan relies actually on a private certification protocol under the supervision and audits of competent authorities.
Only those female animals that are kept on farms enrolled in the protocol are eligible for export to the EU. To verify that the corrective actions proposed by Brazil had been effectively implemented, we decided to send a second audit in follow-up of that first, and this second audit was carried out from 14 to 31 October 2025. The audit found that the weaknesses in laboratory performance identified in 2024 were satisfactorily addressed. However, whilst Brazil has put in place additional guarantees to ensure that only meat from bovine animals never treated with estradiol is exported to the EU, these have not been fully effective. During the audit, the Commission auditors identified consignments of meat obtained from female bovine animals that were treated with estradiol and that were incorrectly certified for export to the EU.
The Commission promptly notified via its rapid alert system for food and feed the competent authorities of all Member States to ensure that the meat concerned would be withdrawn from the EU market. On its side, Brazil submitted an action plan with additional guarantees to enhance its segregated system. In addition, Brazil suspended from the protocol the farm which from which, sorry, the erroneously certified consignment originated. And Brazil also suspended the certification body concerned. The Commission has been in contact with Brazil on this last action plan and will actually carry out a second follow-up audit to verify the effectiveness of the Brazilian actions in due course.
It is however not envisaged in the short term as Brazil is not included in the list of countries authorized to export beef to the EU in the context of the Union's fight against antimicrobial resistance and the fourth list I mentioned earlier in my speech. Mr. Chairman, honorable members, the EU has a comprehensive and protective framework for the control of the products of animal origin imported from third countries. This case demonstrates how the Commission maintains via repetitive audits a high pressure of control to check that EU requirements are respected in third countries to contribute to a level playing field for EU farmers and a high level of food safety for all Europeans. Thank you very much.
Herbert Dorfmann
Ja, danke für die Darstellung. Ich glaube, und da gebe ich dem Sprecher in seinem letzten Satz sehr recht, wenn wir Glaubwürdigkeit erhalten wollen und auch unserer Verpflichtung, glaube ich, gegenüber den Konsumenten in der Europäischen Union gerecht werden wollen, denen wir versprechen, dass sie Lebensmittel bekommen, die sicher sind, dann müssen wir Kontrollen durchführen, Audits durchführen und entsprechend auch reagieren, wie das im Fall Brasilien passiert ist. Also in der Presse wurde das zum Teil ja dann auch hochgespielt, dass das der Beweis wäre, dass Mercosur nicht funktionieren würde und dass in Südamerika Produktion grundsätzlich nicht konform laufen würde. Ich denke, so ist es nicht. Der Fall hat bewiesen, dass wir unsere Arbeit machen, dass die Audits durchgeführt werden und dass es auch den Durchgriff gibt, wenn eben die Voraus- oder wenn die die in den Audits oder nach den Audits dargelegten Auflagen nicht eingehalten werden.
Ich hätte eigentlich nur eine Frage. Sie haben die Checks an der Grenze genannt und haben gesagt, inwieweit die oder die Prozentsätze, wie diese Checks erhöht worden sind im letzten Jahr und im nächsten Jahr noch erhöht werden sollen. Können Sie das in absoluten Zahlen sagen? Das heißt, wie viel Prozent der importierten Ware wird effektiv auch kontrolliert? Weil eine Erhöhung 100 % ist natürlich eine Sache, ist von 50 auf 100 % erhöhen und eine andere Sache ist von 1 auf 2 % erhöhen.
Das heißt, mich würde auch interessieren, was ist die absolute Zahl der Kontrollen, der Prozentsatz der Kontrollen, die an unseren Grenzen an Fleischprodukten und tierischen Produkten durchgeführt wird. Herzlichen Dank.
Dario Nardella
Grazie. Grazie, Presidente. Ringrazio la Commissione per questa presentazione. L'audit conferma quello che temevamo. A due anni dall'audit del 2024, il Brasile non garantisce ancora del tutto che la carne bovina trattata con estradiolo resti fuori dal mercato europeo.
Sono state individuate, appunto, partite coperte da 15 certificati sanitari e nessun allevamento è ancora certificato secondo il nuovo protocollo. E qui c'è da sottolineare che la presenza di audit e di controlli è una garanzia affinché l'accordo Mercosur possa essere un accordo efficace, possa essere un accordo rispettoso del principio di reciprocità. E proprio riguardo a questo, chiedo al rappresentante della Commissione se un partner commerciale non riesce a far rispettare regole che conosce da tempo, quali strumenti concreti in attuazione dell'accordo UE-Mercosur la Commissione ritiene si possano attivare per sospendere le importazioni non conformi e in quali tempi? Grazie.
Valérie Deloge
Chers collègues, la sécurité alimentaire européenne ne peut pas s'arrêter à nos frontières. La Commission nous rappelle à l'envie que les produits importés doivent respecter les exigences européennes de sécurité sanitaire et soyons clairs, ces contrôles à nos frontières sont véritablement indispensables. Mais les contrôles c'est bien, la réciprocité c'est mieux. Nous pouvons multiplier les audits, les contrôles documentaires, les contrôles physiques et mettre en place des nouvelles plateformes numériques, cela ne changera pas une réalité. Si nous imposons à nos agriculteurs des normes toujours plus nombreuses et plus contraignantes, tout en permettant des produits issus de normes de production différentes d'entrer librement sur notre marché, nous organisons nous-mêmes la disparition de nos filières.
Et la Commission reconnaît dès désormais elle-même cette contradiction. Alléluia. Dans cette vision pour l'agriculture et l'alimentation, elle annonce vouloir mieux aligner les normes de production applicables aux produits importés sur celles imposées à nos producteurs européens, mais nous ne pouvons pas nous contenter d'une déclaration d'intention. Lorsqu'un pesticide est interdit en Europe, lorsqu'une exigence est imposée à nos éleveurs ou lorsqu'une norme environnementale ou sanitaire augmente les coûts de production, il doit être légitime de demander que les produits qui entrent sur notre marché soient soumis à des exigences comparables. La sécurité alimentaire est une question de contrôle, mais la survie de notre agriculture est une question de réciprocité.
Avec mes collègues Patriotes pour l'Europe, nous défendons donc une approche beaucoup plus ambitieuse et sécurisante pour les agriculteurs et consommateurs européens. Cette ambition passe par des outils de régulation du marché permettant d'éviter que nos producteurs soient écrasés par des prix artificiellement bas. Pour cela, nous devons aussi être capables de réfléchir à des prix réellement rémunérateurs pour nos agriculteurs. Au cœur de cette ambition, le consommateur doit aussi pouvoir choisir en connaissance de cause et le producteur européen doit aussi pouvoir être identifié et valorisé. Lorsqu'un produit est importé, son origine doit donc être clairement identifiable et le consommateur doit pouvoir savoir et choisir d'où proviennent ses principaux ingrédients.
C'est pour cela que nous faisons des amendements dans ce sens. Notre idée donc est simple, nous ne pouvons pas demander à nos agriculteurs de produire selon les standards les plus exigeants au monde, puis organiser leur mise en concurrence avec des productions qui ne supportent même pas les mêmes contraintes. N'oubliez pas que nos agriculteurs sont justement les garants de notre souveraineté alimentaire.
Bert-Jan Ruissen
Dank u wel, voorzitter. Goed om het vandaag te hebben over inderdaad de handel met Brazilië en de invoer vanuit Brazilië van vlees en ook het recent importverbod wat daarvoor geldt.
De hele gang van zaken roept best vragen op. De EU heeft het Mercosur-verdrag gesloten. We hebben nu een vrijhandelsovereenkomst met Brazilië en omliggende landen. En nu blijkt dat Brazilië gewoon niet aan de voedselveiligheidseisen kan voldoen en ziet de Commissie zich genoodzaakt om een importverbod in te stellen. Dat overigens de Commissie actie heeft ondernomen is denk ik zeer terecht.
Op het moment dat er serieuze risico's worden gezien en men zich niet aan de regels houdt rondom antibioticagebruik etcetera, dan moet er inderdaad gehandeld worden. Wat dat betreft waardering daarvoor. Maar de relatie met het vrijhandelsakkoord roept natuurlijk best wel vragen op in dit verband. Namelijk deze vragen. Is het überhaupt wel verstandig om als EU om handelsovereenkomsten te sluiten, vrijhandelsovereenkomsten te sluiten met landen en met handelsblokken die de voedselveiligheid blijkbaar niet kunnen garanderen?
En wat is ook het effect van vrijhandelsovereenkomsten op de frequentie van de controles? Kan de Commissie daar misschien iets over zeggen? Is het zo dat op het moment dat wij een handelsovereenkomst sluiten dat dan de frequenties van de controles wellicht afnemen? Kan de Commissie daar iets over vertellen? Ik ben ook wel benieuwd hoeveel audits er de afgelopen jaren zijn gedaan bij handelspartners voor wat betreft het garanderen dat vlees vrij is van hormonen en antibiotica.
Misschien dat de Commissie daar toch wat meer inzicht nog in geeft. Dank u wel.
Ciaran Mullooly
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to Mr. Tivenar for coming before the committee as I had requested. Thank you to the coordinators for arranging this this afternoon, because the Commission's audits raise, for my mind, serious doubts about controls intended to keep beef from cattle treated with oestradiol out of EU exports. Let us look what happened here. Beef from treated animals later entered the food chain, including coming into Ireland via Northern Ireland. Because the facts are that initially this frozen beef was imported legally into the Netherlands on the 3rd of September.
Yet it was the 11th of November that the alarm bell was raised, the system raised the alarm. At that stage the meat had been eaten. It was too late. So I ask the question of the Commission: where did the controls fall down? The border check was mentioned.
Independent certification was mentioned by the Brazilians. Did it fail? Well, how do we know it will not fail again in the future? Isn't that the core issue going forward in relation in dealing with this situation? Because many consumers understood that beef sold in the EU was free from this hormone, as it is banned in the EU.
They ate it before they were told it was not safe, it should be recalled. So a related matter: since the 3rd of September, Brazil has also been excluded from the EU list for certain animal products because sufficient guarantees on antimicrobial rules have not been provided. I ask the Commission: what independently verified changes are required before exports can actually resume? In light of what happened in this other case, will there be a follow-up audit? Can you give a credible timetable?
Or would you agree with the former chairman of the European Food Safety Authority, Mr. Patrick Wall, that you can't? Because if we're starting from scratch here, animals cannot be slaughtered until they are two years old. So when does the clock restart? Will it be two years' time you'll have a system of verification, or will it be even further down the road? I also want to raise the gap in Regulation 1760/2000.
Mandatory beef origin labelling does not extend to cooked or processed products such as canned beef and ready meals. So will the Commission propose country of origin labelling for beef used as an ingredient? Does the 3rd of September restriction cover these products and composite foods? We need questions and I hope the Commission can answer them today. We need answers.
Thomas Waitz
Thank you. Just a partial answer to my colleague Mullolly: labelling is not even applying if you just salt it and pack it. Then in that moment you need to tell anyone where that meat is coming from.
You don't even need to go as far as processed food. Towards the Commission, yes, certain questions were raised already so I will not repeat them. We're talking about antibiotics, we're talking about hormones. Can you tell us how long of a time span you can actually detect the use of antibiotics and hormones? I mean antibiotics in Brazil you can buy per kilo in a normal store without even telling whether you're a farmer or not.
So can you tell us how long can you actually detect it? And and then I mean how do you track back the origin of a certain piece of meat? Because in Brazil there's no individual earmarks, you know. So when once a cow arrives in a feedlot or once a cow arrives at the slaughterhouse you can't tell anymore which exact cow comes from which place. It's always many producers delivering to the same place.
So how do you track it back to a certain producer? And last but not least the question that goes beyond the the Brazil meat question. Let me give you an example, chlorpyrifos has been banned by the way also in US that tells you tells us a lot. And chlorpyrifos is mainly used to make citrus fruits look nice. So what is important to sell them in a supermarket so they look good.
It's banned in Europe for good reasons. And and still what happens is that now our citrus fruit producers in Italy, in Spain are listed out from supermarket supplies and replaced by South African citrus fruit which still use chlorpyrifos. So just based on that example, now under current legislation what is for you a residue that is non-acceptable? The pure fact that you find chlorpyrifos molecules on the citrus fruit or are you judging the product along the international residue levels that that are designed in Geneva and are usually much much higher than the precautionary principle ones that we use in the European Union? Please tell us under what legislation or what, you know, interpretation of our legislation you're doing your work and thank you very much for doing the checks you have reported on.
Thank you, Chair.
Luke Ming Flanagan
Members of this committee have a massive amount of power and we've had a massive amount of power to deal with a variety of issues but we never actually do that. It's obvious at this stage and it was always obvious to anyone who really wanted to look that the Mercosur block and the EU operate at vastly different standards but still we don't take the Mercosur deal off the table. And people will come in here and they will complain till the cows go home, sick from whatever they feed them in Brazil, but you will still go along with Mercosur. So I find this really hard to explain to the public because I have not met anyone yet and I've been at this for 12 years who has approached me and said how can we get Mercosur beef easier on our plate. Now I don't know about you, I haven't met a farming organization at home that agrees with the idea that we should have Mercosur beef on our plate.
So I'm just wondering who's driving this? The consumers don't want it, the farmers don't want it, in here you tell me you don't want it but you go along with this. So who exactly is driving this? Because, you know, people can say oh look this has gone wrong. This was always going to go wrong.
We warned about this, but here we are. And I think there was a very good question asked by Herbert Dorfmann there, in absolute percentage terms, what sort of number of audits take place? Because in the case here, fortunately, the EU won the winning lotto because we happened to choose the right ticket, we chose the right beef to have a look at. But how many rotten, filthy, dirty tickets have been bought by the EU public where unfortunately we didn't find out the truth behind what they were buying and eating? So we cannot trust this.
But one thing we can trust is our own systems, and if we can't, we can improve them internally. We produce enough here at home. We're talking about strategic food stocks. We can produce this ourselves. So why risk feeding, excuse my language, call it what it is, feeding my children, my relations and the people in my town and my country shit, and you're going along with it.
Daniel Buda
For the S&D, Ivan David is not here, I don't see another person. For Patriots, Mr. Penelle, please, one minute.
Gilles Pennelle
Oui, merci. Sur son site internet, la Commission affirme que tous les aliments vendus dans l'UE, y compris ceux des importations, respectent les exigences sanitaires élevées. La DG Santé dit la même chose. Or, de nombreux rapports et études démontrent le contraire. L'Autorité européenne de sécurité des aliments indique que pour 2024, 5,2 % des échantillons provenant de pays tiers étaient non conformes aux limites de résidus de pesticides, contre 1 % produits dans l'Union.
Cinq fois plus. Pourtant, nous ne disposons toujours pas d'un chiffre clair sur la part totale des importations alimentaires effectivement inspectées et analysées. Les règles prévoient une inspection physique de base pour 30 % des lots de viande de volaille et 15 % des lots de miel soumis au contrôle frontalier. L'EFSA constate également qu'en 2024, le nombre minimum d'analyses prévu n'a pas été atteint pour 86 pesticides de son programme coordonné. Ces constats signifient surtout clairement que l'augmentation des importations augmente l'exposition des consommateurs aux risques sanitaires.
Le meilleur moyen de protéger durablement les consommateurs, c'est de produire nous-mêmes les aliments de qualité dont nous avons besoin.
Stefan Köhler
Ja, vielen Dank fürs Wort und für den Austausch heute zu dieser Überprüfung der Standards und den Audits. Ich frag mich, der Kollege Dorfmann hat die Frage schon gestellt, wie viel wirklich aktuell untersucht wird. Und ich würde auch fragen, nicht nur jetzt in Brasilien, sondern gibt's da Unterschiede bei den Einfuhrländern? Gibt's da Unterschiede zum Beispiel bei Pflanzenschutzmitteln? Bei Hormonen haben wir eine Zahl gehört, aber da hätte ich ein bisschen mehr konkrete Sachen.
Und dann würde mich fragen, wie denn eigentlich vorgegangen wird, wenn was auffällig ist. Wenn ich als Landwirt eine Kontrolle habe und es war was schlecht, dann komme ich automatisch in Risikopool und werde öfters kontrolliert. Hat die EU so was Ähnliches vor, wenn bei Importländern besondere Auffälligkeiten gegeben sind, dass man hier einfach die Kontrollquote erhöht und damit das Kontrollverfahren verbessert und beschleunigt? Vielen Dank.
Csaba Dömötör
Nemcsak mi mondjuk, hanem hatóságok is, hogy az EU-n kívülről érkező élelmiszerek sokkal kevésbé biztonságosak ahhoz képest, amit az európai gazdák termelnek. Ezt az uniós élelmiszerbiztonsági ügynökség adatai is alátámasztják. Az idei jelentésük szerint négyszer annyi esetben lépték túl a hatóanyag-maradványokra vonatkozó határértékeket az európai származású élelmiszerekhez képest.
Egy Vietnámból származó szárított gyümölcsszállítmányban például 36 különböző hatóanyag-maradványt mutattak ki. Minősítő körülmény, hogy számos esetben olyan hatóanyag-maradványokat mutatnak ki, amelyeket az EU-ban már rég betiltottak, mondjuk azért, mert rákkeltők. Az helyes, hogy a Bizottság megnövelte az ellenőrzések számát. De ha közben az új szabadkereskedelmi megállapodásokkal elképesztő módon megnövelik a beáramló importot, akkor a következmények borítékolhatóak. Az itteni többség pár hónapja támogatta a Mercosur-megállapodást, most meg sajnálkoznak a következményeken.
Teljesen abszurd. Éppen ezért azt a kérdést tenném fel, nem lenne egyszerűbb, ha be sem engednék a nem biztonságos élelmiszereket? Köszönöm.
Marko Vešligaj
Thank you, Chair. I'll speak on Croatian. Sigurnost hrane i sljedivost ne smiju završavati na granicama Europske unije. Jer ako od naših poljoprivrednika tražimo stroge standarde proizvodnje, iste kriterije moramo primjenjivati na proizvode koji dolaze iz trećih zemalja. Zato je zapravo odluka koja je vezana uz Brazil, koja je stupila na snagu 3. rujna, toliko važna.
Jer od europskih proizvođača sigurno ne možemo tražiti najviše standarde o kojima danas ovdje govorimo, a istodobno onda puštati na naše tržište proizvode koji niti približno ne zadovoljavaju tu razinu standarda. Naravno da je problem što zbog tih standarda naši proizvodi dodatno rastu. Input troškovi su danas alarmantno visoki, cijena poljoprivrednih proizvoda u Europskoj uniji nam pada. Dakle, s jedne strane dižemo cijenu proizvodnje, a s druge strane kroz uvoz jeftinih proizvoda rušimo krajnju vrijednost proizvoda. I onda najveći trošak i najmanju zaradu kome ide?
Poljoprivredniku. Jedno rješenje po meni je pozabaviti se analizom kumulativnih učinaka različitih trgovačkih sporazuma. I moje pitanje Komisiji jest, idu u tom smjeru, kada ćete provoditi redovne procjene kumulativnih učinaka trgovinskih sporazuma na kompletni poljoprivredni sektor? Hvala.
Christine Singer
Ja, vielen Dank. Das Thema Importkontrollen ist für mich eine zentrale Frage im Zusammenhang mit fairen Wettbewerbsbedingungen für unsere Landwirtschaft. Im Juni habe ich deshalb eine schriftliche Anfrage an die Kommission zur Kontrolle tierischer Importe aus Drittstaaten gestellt, und seit Anfang September gelten nun auch für Importe die strengeren EU-Vorgaben zum Einsatz von antimikrobiellen Mitteln. Der aktuelle Fall Brasilien, der zeigt, wie wichtig es ist, dass unsere Standards nicht nur auf dem Papier stehen, sondern dass sie tatsächlich kontrolliert und durchgesetzt werden. Davon hängt für mich auch die Glaubwürdigkeit unserer Handelspolitik ab.
Die Kommission hat angekündigt, die Audits in Drittstaaten und an unseren Grenzkontrollstellen deutlich zu erhöhen. Deshalb meine erste Frage: Wie viele zusätzliche Audits wurden bereits durchgeführt, und wie schaut der konkrete Zeitplan für die kommenden Monate aus? Und ein zweiter Punkt ist mir besonders wichtig: Die Kontrollen an den EU-Außengrenzen werden von den nationalen Behörden durchgeführt. Wie stellen Sie sicher, dass dieselben Vorschriften in allen Mitgliedstaaten auch tatsächlich gleich streng und einheitlich angewendet werden? Denn europäische Standards müssen überall gleich viel wert sein.
Dankeschön.
Benoit Cassart
Oui, merci Monsieur le Président. Je salue pleinement la démarche de la Commission européenne qui a eu le courage de refuser l'importation de viande brésilienne qui n'offrait pas assez de garanties en matière d'utilisation d'antibiotiques. C'est un premier pas qui va vraiment dans la bonne direction, mais différentes questions fondamentales restent ouvertes. Un, qu'en est-il du respect de nos normes environnementales?
Deux, qu'en est-il du respect de nos normes européennes de bien-être animal, les plus strictes au monde ? Et trois, dans quelles conditions et dans quel délai la Commission européenne pense-t-elle lever l'embargo sur la viande brésilienne ? Merci.
Arno Bausemer
Ja, Herr Vorsitzender, meine Damen und Herren, es ist richtig, dass seit 3. September jetzt kein Fleisch mehr aus Brasilien importiert wird, aber die Frage ist, warum war das überhaupt nötig und wie viel verdorbenes oder kontaminiertes Fleisch ist jetzt überhaupt in den europäischen Markt gelangt und hat damit unsere Verbraucher mindestens mal verärgert, in jedem Fall aber ihre Gesundheit gefährdet. Noch haben wir ja Landwirte Gott sei Dank in Europa und viele Tausend haben im Januar hier demonstriert, in Straßburg war das damals, und wir haben entschieden, dass das überprüft werden soll vom Europäischen Gerichtshof. Wir als Parlament haben diesem Mercosur-Abkommen auch noch nie zugestimmt, also Legislative offen, Legislative offen, also Judikative auch. Die Frage ist, was, wie geht das hier überhaupt weiter, wenn solche Entscheidungen getroffen werden und warum macht man so ein Abkommen, wenn man doch weiß, und das ist bekannt seit Jahren, das hat eine, ist schön, dass Irland gerade Ratspräsidentschaft innehat, das haben irische Journalisten, irischer Bauernverband ja auch schon rausbekommen vor einiger Zeit, dass dort im Prinzip ja Antibiotika auch frei im Handel gekauft werden können in Brasilien und dass damit eben auch Missbrauch stattfindet. Warum hat man überhaupt Brasilien aufgenommen?
Und solange man die Gesundheit unserer Verbraucher hier dermaßen gefährdet, hat Frau von der Leyen ein massives Glaubwürdigkeitsproblem und damit die gesamte Kommission, und da muss man endlich etwas dran ändern im Sinne unserer Verbraucher.
Eric Sargiacomo
Merci et merci beaucoup à la Commission pour être transparente quant aux résultats de cet audit et sur les premières mesures prises. Toutefois, je rappellerai que cette réglementation concernant les hormones et les antibiotiques de croissance est aussi vieille que les premières discussions sur le Mercosur. Il est étonnant qu'à peine signée, on découvre qu'effectivement ces règles ne sont pas respectées et pas respectables dans la situation de l'élevage aujourd'hui au Brésil en particulier. Certification défaillante, traçabilité défaillante, protocole sanitaire défaillant, que faut-il rajouter ? Alors évidemment, on a suspendu.
C'est même plus une question, j'ai envie de dire, simplement de concurrence déloyale, c'est une question sanitaire. C'est la mise en danger de la vie d'autrui, des citoyens européens par la consommation de cette viande dont on n'arrive pas finalement à arrêter les importations que l'on a autorisées, si ce n'est comme ça de temps en temps parce qu'on va prendre quelques lots. Donc il y a urgence et je crois qu'il faut prendre en mesure l'importance de la situation et agir rapidement. Aujourd'hui, nous n'avons pas les instruments dans le cadre du Mercosur pour le faire.
Martin Häusling
Ja, meine Frage geht dahin, ob eigentlich außer in Brasilien in anderen Ländern auch dieselben Kontrollen vorgenommen wurden. Ich meine, Paraguay gilt auch nicht unbedingt als ein Staat, der als unter Kontrolle steht, um es mal vorsichtig zu formulieren. Und wie weit kann man eigentlich den Einsatz von Antibiotika nachverfolgen? Ich meine, wenn einmal Antibiotika eingesetzt wird, heißt das noch lange nicht, dass es im Fleisch irgendwo nachweisbar ist. Wie finden die Kontrollen statt?
Also muss man sich da auf den guten Glauben verlassen, dass die Behörden vor Ort schon alles anständig machen? Weil bei Fleischhormonen lässt sich das einfach nachweisen, aber bei Antibiotika und besonders der Einsatz bei den Hühnern, der ist extrem hoch in Brasilien, das habe ich selber gesehen. Und mich wundert schon, dass das überhaupt kein Thema ist großartig. Und deshalb die Frage, wie macht man eigentlich den Nachweis?
Hat das im Grunde genommen dann Konsequenzen für den Import? Und es wurde immer davon geredet, Reserveantibiotika werden eingesetzt. Ich darf nur mal daran erinnern, Reserveantibiotika werden auch in Europa eingesetzt, die auf der WHO-Liste stehen. Im Hühnerbereich wird 30 Prozent der Hühnerwelt mit Colistin behandelt. Also wir sollten uns da nicht so erheben, als wären wir die nur Guten und alle anderen schlecht.
Solange wir in Europa auch noch Reserveantibiotika einsetzen, haben wir auch in Europa ein Problem in der Hühnerhaltung.
Asger Christensen
Tak for det. Vi har et hul i EU-lovgivningen på importeret kød, lige så snart det er forarbejdet, varmebehandlet convenience-produkter. Der bliver importeret kyllingekød fra Kina, som ikke bliver kontrolleret i øjeblikket. Der går rygter om, at der bliver handlet kød på Temu, som også er uden for kontrollen. Så vi har et hul i EU's lovgivning på import af forarbejdet kødprodukter.
Tak.
Daniel Buda
Domnule director, am o întrebare legată de ceea ce înseamnă capacitatea Uniunii Europene de control a mărfurilor odată intrate pe teritoriul Uniunii. Am înțeles că se fac controale în Brazilia, în statele din Mercosur. Mă interesează însă aspecte legate de capacitatea de control a Uniunii Europene și dacă aveți o hartă cu intrarea acestor produse în Uniunea Europeană, pentru că nu știu, nu cred că fiecare stat membru importă aceste produse prima dată în statele în țările respective. Sunt câteva porți de intrare și mă interesează dacă ați crescut capacitatea de control în aceste porți de intrare a acestor produse din statele din Mercosur, pentru că această chestiune legată de comunicare și lipsa de încredere în capacitatea de control a Uniunii Europene este ceea ce frământă foarte mult, pe bună dreptate, și aș spune eu, în primul rând consumatorii europeni și, evident, pe urmă și fermierii din Uniunea Europeană, care se simt profund nedreptățiți legat de ceea ce înseamnă acest dublu standard. Și mă interesează aspecte, așa cum a spus și de altfel Herbert Dorfmann, vizavi de controale.
Cât de mult ați crescut aceste controale de când am avut această aprobare a acordului cu Mercosur.
Acum aveți cuvântul pentru cinci minute.
Eric Thévenard
Mr. Chairman, honorable members, thank you very much for all these questions. Actually, there were many and interesting. So I'll try to answer them all. First of all, the figures I gave in terms of percentage increase are the percentage of increase of audits we conduct in third countries or on border control posts. So this increase was only that.
Now, to address the question that was asked about the checks. So everything comes through the border control post, everything. So all products of animal origin, and they are of course submitted to a number of checks, as I said, identity, physical, and documentary. Taking the example of Brazil, which I think is the one that is of interest to you, the poultry meat is checked at 100 percent. The beef is checked at 30 percent.
And the minced meat from beef is checked at 50 percent, to give you an idea of that kind of control.
You asked me what could be the measures from the Mercosur agreement that could be triggered to stop imports. Actually, I have to make a point extremely clear, and it is valid for any free trade agreement, is that it is totally decoupled from the sanitary and phytosanitary requirements. Basically, SPS rules, our food safety rules, are paramount and as a consequence apply de facto. That's the reason why you have an agreement with Mercosur countries, including Brazil, and Brazil was suspended because of the doubts we had on its capacity to make sure that antibiotics would not be used in the production of food from animal origin over the lifetime. So you have to make this clear distinction: on one side, FTAs and trade agreements, and on the other, our food safety, animal health rules, which keep applying.
And so, which we can use to affect the capacity of a country, even if there is a trade agreement, to export its products to the EU for XYZ sanitary reasons. On reciprocity and the level playing field, yes. And I think that's clearly a commitment of this college, which has been clearly identified during the discussions and also, we have to recognize, further to the farmers' demonstration, it has been mentioned also in the vision for agriculture and food, and we are delivering on that. These are the figures I explained. So my commissioner, Olivér Várhelyi, has clearly asked us to increase the number of audits in third countries to make sure that we would get more information on the compliance with our requirements.
And that's why you see a clear trend in the number of audits we conduct to check. So we were at plus 50% compared to 25 in 26, and we would be at plus 100% again compared to 25 in 27. To turn that into figures, this means that we will conduct 60, more or less 60 audits in third countries in 27 over the whole world. And I hope that indeed this will contribute to maintaining this level playing field. Obviously, there are audits where the outcome is negative, there are audits where the outcome is positive, and we have to acknowledge that.
Our auditors are extremely independent and they come back with a very clear and precise picture of what they see on the spot. Then there was this question, I come back to FDA, on the effect of frequency on checks. There is no effect at all. So the checks at the borders are done on an SPS basis, and that's it. And actually, when we see problems in a third country, we may decide to submit the commodity in question to increased checks because we want to control more things where we have seen that what we saw in the country was okay, but not to that extent that would justify not controlling more.
So the fact that there is an FTA does not at all affect the number of controls we conduct at the borders. On the contrary, I would say that it's the history of good outcome that would probably affect in the border control post the decision by the officials in the border control post to focus on this or that commodity or this or that country. So they are learning from experience.
On the number of audits, I mentioned that already. Maybe a word on antimicrobials. This, you have to realize that the rule is in place only since the 3rd of September of this year. So the audits will start actually. So next year on antibiotics and antimicrobials, we will conduct five audits in third countries.
And this year we conducted one, Brazil, because as some of you mentioned, Brazil has been indeed suspended for its export because of the use of antibiotics. And so for honey and poultry, they said that they were ready to demonstrate their capacity to ensure the absence of use of antibiotics in such production for the export to the EU, so we went to check. And actually, the report on this audit has been published this morning on the website of the Commission. And actually, it's a positive outcome. Then on the history of the case and whether there would be a follow-up audit on the estradiol case.
Yes, there will be, I mentioned it. So we are in touch with the Brazilians on their action plan. We have sent them back questions to which they have not yet responded. Clearly, we will want to go back and check and audit again what they have put in place to correct the let's say issues we had identified during the first follow-up. So the 2024 audit led to two recommendations.
One was closed, the other was left open, that was the one on estradiol. When we went, it was still not satisfactory. And so there were a number of actions taken. Now we are waiting for their responses and in any case we will go. We will check to be sure that whatever is said is indeed happening.
The only thing is that I manage resources. For the time being, the beef from Brazil is banned for import into the EU. So there is no intention on my side to allocate resources human and financial to go and audit something where no trade can take place. So this will happen when there is possibly an opening. For the time being, so we will not go back and check on estradiol because this trade is not taking place.
So it leads to the next question which was when will it be open for beef? Well, that's a good question and the answer is I don't know. In short, time between birth and slaughter let's say will be around two years. So you can calculate yourself, nothing before two years in theory. So two years from now beef should not come from Brazil.
And this has of course an impact on what I just said before on the follow-up on estradiol, we will go only when we see a perspective. Yes, the question about how do we control, that was I think Mr. Waitz who said that. Of course we are not there as auditors nor are our colleagues in border control posts as well.
We are not checking necessarily all the products for the residues we could find. It's not necessarily an issue of residues. Of course, I did not mention earlier, but there are a number of physical checks which lead at the border to some analytical checks. So there are, let's say, 20% of the meat that is sampled and sent to laboratory for analysis. But basically the system is to be based on segregation.
And that is what was the problem with Brazil, is that the segregation did not work well. And we identified during the audit that some farms which were supposed to not use estradiol had used estradiol. No, it was which used estradiol, which was supposed not to be exported, was exported. Sorry. So the segregation is key and this is what we go and check.
So when we audit the country, we go to see all the steps to make sure that this segregation is actually in place and implemented. The question about chlorpyrifos. Basically, if there is an MRL, a maximum residue level, this means that under this level we consider that the product, even if there is residue, is safe. Then it's safe. If it is above the MRL, then a decision is taken.
But the principle is the following. We cannot rule the world. So there are places in the world where substances can be used which for X, Y, Z reasons are allowed there but are not allowed in Europe, on our territory. The approach taken is that when there is an MRL, a maximum residue level that is fixed, we respect it. And it's established on the basis of science with EFSA, etc., etc.
So fine. If there is no maximum residue level that is established, in this case we are extremely strict. We check and all what exceeds what is called the technical zero, this means the lowest level that we can detect by an analytical method. What is under it, of course, we cannot find because that's the lowest level we can detect. What is above, it's removed or not allowed on the market.
On BCPs and member states and AMR. How many controls on BCPs? I think I mentioned that already. For antimicrobials, it's not easy to detect clearly because we speak of a rule that applies to the whole life of an animal. So we are definitely obliged to rely on the structure in place in the country of origin to make sure that the rules of the EU are respected.
If you give to a calf an antibiotic and then you kill that calf three years later, there's not a single chance that in the meat you will find the antibiotic in question. So we need to have this system of segregation and trust in the country to make sure that these products never reach the EU market. And the other question was whether we can trust member states in border control posts. The answer is obviously yes. Honestly, we audit a lot of border control posts.
First of all, they are appointed by the member states. When they design these border control posts, they submit to us a plan. We look at it and the member states nominate them. They are well-equipped and we audit them regularly. I mentioned earlier that we were increasing the number of audits on the border control posts.
And so we make sure that there is harmonization between them in terms of implementation of the EU legislation.
In addition, in the framework of the vision for agriculture and food, we have created a task force which is aimed at improving the harmonization of those controls between Member States and between border control posts. And actually there are a number of experts from Member States who have been appointed and proposed by Member States and who are visiting now the border control posts to have a sort of peer discussion to assess and look at the way each of the border control posts visited is actually functioning. A question was mentioned about other rules than the food safety ones, so animal welfare or environmental requirements. As you know, there is no extraterritoriality on animal welfare. The only thing that we check is the welfare at slaughter.
On that, when we go and assess countries for food safety and slaughterhouses, we do look into this aspect because that's part of the slaughterhouse process. Otherwise, this is not under our remit and we do not check. Then there was a question: are other countries subject to the same tests? Yes, of course, there is no distinction between the countries, so we do apply the same consistent approach to all third countries in the world. I think I already answered the question about the tracing of antibiotics, so that's okay.
And then: do we have the EU capacity to control, Mr. Chairman, I think that was your question, the goods when they enter? Yes, we have. So we have a network of border control posts spread over the whole territory at the border of the EU, as I said, in ports, in airports, also on the roads. They are checked regularly and they do a good job. Honestly, they do a good job.
And is there a map of such border control posts? Yes, it exists. It's not in the form of a map, but there is a list of the border control posts on the website and they are, as I said, checked before they are designated by the Member States and so you can find that on the website of the Commission. I have been a bit long, but I wanted to address as many questions as possible. So thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Daniel Buda
Mulțumim foarte mult pentru intervenția dumneavoastră. V-am și lăsat să răspundeți la toate întrebările pentru că este un subiect extrem de important pentru noi și, domnule director, apreciem eforturile pe care le faceți. Vă încurajăm să comunicați mai mult legat de eforturile pe care le faceți. În același timp, nu vă ascund că ne-ați bătut un cui în talpă cu faptul că dumneavoastră aveți încredere în ceea ce vă spun autoritățile din Brazilia cu privire la ce se întâmplă în ferme de la momentul nașterii sau, mă rog, începutul vieții unui vițel, de exemplu, până la abatorizare. Și aici vă solicităm, nu vă rugăm, vă solicităm să vă intensificați controalele în teren, la fața locului, pentru a vă asigura că în acele ferme de unde se fac exporturi de animale către Uniunea Europeană nu sunt folosite substanțe care să fie interzise la nivelul Uniunii Europene, cum ar fi hormonii de creștere, antibioticele pentru a suplini condițiile de bunăstare și așa mai departe.
Pentru că aici este marea problemă pe care noi o ridicăm și pe care fermierii care au fost în stradă ne-au ridicat-o. Aceste standarde care pot să fie duble raportat la condițiile de creștere din Mercosur în Uniunea Europeană. Și avem nevoie de controale care să fie făcute din partea Comisiei Europene și nu să mergem doar pe încrederea autorităților sau pe ceea ce ne furnizează autoritățile din Brazilia. Dar sunt convins că veți face aceste lucruri în viitor.
Mergem așadar la ultimul punct pe ordinea de zi de astăzi și avem un schimb de opinii cu Comisia referitor la legea privind sănătatea animală. La 6 iulie 2026, Comisia a publicat un raport referitor la evaluarea regulamentului Uniunii Europene 20429 pe 2016 privind bolile transmisibile ale animalelor și de modificare și de abrogare a anumitor acte din domeniul sănătății animalelor, așa-numita lege privind sănătatea animală. Dorim să aflăm mai multe despre constatările evaluării și despre recomandările Comisiei. Având în vedere focarele de boli ale animalelor din întreaga Uniune Europeană, trebuie să adresăm următoarele întrebări fundamentale: dacă actualul cadru al Uniunii Europene în materie de sănătate animală este în continuare adecvat scopului și este eficace. Ce ar trebui să fie îmbunătățit și ce ar trebui să fie făcut în plus?
În acest context, am plăcerea să-i urez bun venit domnului Francisco Reviriego Gordejo, șeful unității de sănătate animală din cadrul DG SANTE, care va prezenta raportul și va răspunde întrebărilor noastre. În cadrul Comisiei AGRI, suntem deosebit de interesați să ascultăm opiniile dumneavoastră, domnule director, cu privire la eficacitatea legislației actuale în materie de sănătate animală, la situația sănătății animalelor din Uniunea Europeană, precum și la aspectele care ar putea să fie îmbunătățite. Domnule Reviriego Gordejo, vă dau cuvântul pentru opt minute, după aceea voi da cuvântul coordonatorilor și evident colegilor și în final dumneavoastră pentru a răspunde. Aveți cuvântul pentru opt minute, vă rog.
Francisco Reviriego Gordejo
Thank you, Mr. President. It's always a pleasure being in this house and in this opportunity to speak about the exercise of the evaluation of the animal health law. I will be guided through through some slides. Next slide, please. And this exercise intends to reply to your fundamental questions that you already posed.
We are presenting a package of documents today in a few slides that are conceptually dense. This is a package consisting of a report to this house and to the Council, to a Commission staff working document that contain further information relevant to the constructions of the report, and the report produced by the external consultant that helps us to build the whole exercise. And I would strongly recommend you to read all this package together with the livestock strategy, as well as the report produced in this house for by the member Fidanza. Next slide. And next slide.
On the conclusions and already replying to your questions, the report concludes that it's positive as regards the outcome of the animal health law when measured against the five evaluation criteria. It also identifies areas that require further attention and action, and it crystallizes telling us the lessons learned in the five years of experience applying this law and how to make it better, mainly as regards simplification, etc. Next slide. The report identifies 11 areas that require further attention and action by a number of players.
I will speak in particular for the Commission. And these 11 actions deal with several aspects, such as strengthening the legal framework, clarifying responsibilities. We can make it better explaining which of the activities and responsibilities should be taken more seriously by the different operators. We need to pay attention to the implementation of the legislation in the different Member States. The implementation that we have seen is not harmonic, is not even.
There are some differences and we need to take action on that. We need to still insist on reducing administrative burden and the costs. There is room for improvement on that. We need to work on the adaptability of our system of categorization and prioritization of diseases. We can still improve our capacity to respond to disease outbreaks, to disease events.
We can make it better as regard the use of regionalization, in particular explaining how regionalization works. We can do better on risk prevention. We can optimize the use of vaccination as one of the tools of major importance to be more effective preventing animal diseases. We all suffer from lack of funds and we need to address this funding. This is action number 10 and is of major importance.
And this is for sure the place that the Commission can speak about money because normally this House is always on our side when it comes to the allocation of resources for the priorities. And we can still do some more work on improving the coherence of this major piece of legislation in the light of One Health and some pieces of legislation that remained a bit outside the scope of the Animal Health Law, like TSEs and zoonoses. Also in the way we interact with the parallel strand of legislation as regards animal welfare. Next slide, please. There are some horizontal actions for the different players that make, that will make the system work better.
In particular for the Commission, for DG SANTE primarily, we need to simplify and clarify the framework and this task has been taken already very seriously, to support implementation and to still keep an eye monitoring the compliance. You have heard my colleague Eric Thévenard speaking about the compliance with the law in third countries, but they also monitor the compliance with the Animal Health Law in the territory of the Union. The Member States can do a bit better to complete the implementation and they need to strengthen the national support to their services, in particular veterinary services, to ensure proper enforcement. And on the side of the producers, they can do better. They can know more, they should know more and they should be more aware of their responsibilities so they can prevent diseases better and they can cooperate with the authorities.
Let's go one step forward, one slide more, please, and one more. Going in a more analytical manner on where the action has to be taken, in particular, and I insist, for the Commission. What can you expect that the Commission will be doing in the next months following this report on the implementation of the Animal Health Law? So we need to ensure that our system of categorization of diseases is suitable. And for that, we should be reviewing whether the current system works, five categories, A, B, C, D, E, you are already very familiar with this, and if the criteria that we use to categorize the diseases is valid still.
We invented, we created this system together with you around 10 years ago. We have been using this system of categories for five years. It's time to check whether we are doing the right thing or whether we need to adapt the legislation. And in the light of the science provided by EFSA, some technicalities related to the intrinsic characteristics of the diseases are revealing to us that we can do better in terms of categorization. Next slide.
As said before, we can improve the response to animal diseases. And for that, we have a major instrument that is the contingency plans that the Member States must have in place. And we can do it better by adopting tertiary legislation that will help the Member States to have better contingency plans. We need to review and regularly have a look to the way these contingency plans are operated. And this can be done by simulation exercises.
And we need to monitor the way this operates. The reality that we are watching every day, and you are familiar with the spread of diseases, is telling us that in some regions and for some viruses, the capacity to act quickly is not as good as we would like. Next slide, please. How do we enhance regionalization and compartmentalization? Regionalization is well known, is separating of territories according to the status as regards diseases.
We are doing good, but we are not always recognized as so good by third countries. And this needs action on our side to still promote the recognition of our regionalization. Call it sanitary diplomacy, call it awareness, call it brainwashing the authorities in Member States, but there is still room for improvement in the way we operate outside our borders. By making it more visual, by preparing maps like the maps you have seen here that are an easy way of translating complicated concepts like regionalization into visible functioning of the system. Next slide.
What do we do to improve the risk-based prevention? Well, we know that we have basic rules on the animal health visits. We have discussed several times what can we do with the animal health visits in the farms to make sure that the biosecurity and the surveillance in place are those that we expect. We may develop rules, we may provide criteria to help the Member State to adapt the frequency of those visits and the intensity to the risk that we intend to address. We can develop guidelines as much as possible on biosecurity with the clear understanding that every country is different, every animal species is different, and every situation as regards the time and the season is different.
Next slide. We know that we need to optimize the use of vaccination in the Union. We have rules enabling the use of vaccination. But we can still revise and review whether these rules are still fit for purpose or we can do it better. We can support the Member States to operate within these rules, making vaccination more attractive for the stakeholders, so the perception of the stakeholders would be more in favor of more use of vaccination.
And we can help the dialogue between the vaccine producers, the Member States, and the final users, in principle is to help the producers.
This we can do it as well and we will come to this house in due course with ideas on how to make more use of of vaccination. On the funding, on the money, this is a tricky issue as I said is action number 10 in our list of actions. We need to align, the next slide please, we need to align the good intention of this evaluation with other pieces of of strategy that are running in parallel like the livestock strategy where funding is also mentioned. What we actually need is having an access to a sufficiently safe reserve fund when the crisis are big. For regular expenditure we know how to handle, we know how to prevent, but when things go really really wrong there is a need to have access to this reserve fund.
There is an opportunity with the next multiannual financial framework to enable the operation and the supply of funding for the necessary actions. Next slide. And in terms of coherence we are fully aware that we can make it better with one health providing for a more collaborative and cooperative approach with other sectors. We know that there are two anomalies in our legislative landscape that is TSEs and zoonoses. We can explore whether it is the best way forward integrating these two diseases into the big umbrella of the animal health law or they need to persist like that like satellites around the animal health law in the future.
And with animal welfare I think that the livestock strategy presents in a single document how to put together animal welfare and animal health. And with this I try to finish my presentation. You can see in the last slide that the Commission is already active. We are about to present and to hopefully adopt a piece of legislation on contingency plans. We have already asked EFSA to give scientific information, scientific evidence to us on how to cope with vector-borne diseases that are a specific challenge for us.
We are making some advocacy with our trading partners for the acceptance of our vaccination and our regionalization. And for future actions in line with the intentions that I presented we are working seriously within the Commission with several services and with the stakeholders and rather sooner than later we will be in a position to present a more informative action plan, if I can call it action plan, or actions that we will be undertaking to address the indication of the report where room for improvement has been manifested to us. Thank you.
Stefan Köhler
Ja, vielen Dank fürs Wort. Danke auch für den Bericht zum Tiergesundheitsrecht. Sie haben einige Maßnahmen angesprochen, gerade das grenzüberschreitende Management, das finde ich ganz wichtig, denn ich habe schon öfters festgestellt, dass wenn Tierseuchen grenzüberschreitend stattfinden, dass dann teilweise bis ins Kleinklein sogar die Landkreise regeln, welche Maßnahmen ergriffen werden. Hier brauchen wir eine schnellere und bessere Koordinierung. Und auch die Regionalisierung ist unbedingt zu nutzen, weil es auch bei den Handelsbeschränkungen natürlich zu erheblichen Verlusten kommt bei den Landwirten und auch die Verbringung der Tiere natürlich mit zusätzlichen Kosten verbunden ist.
Impfstrategie haben Sie angesprochen. Wir haben da teilweise vor Diskussionen, ob das überhaupt sinnvoll ist oder gemacht werden sollte. Hier sollte man auch für die Impfung proaktiv werben und diese auch dann konsequent umsetzen. Und zum Tierwohl habe ich jetzt nicht so sehr viel gehört. Mir liegen auch die Schlachtungen am Herzen.
Die Schlachthöfe werden oder die Schlachtstätten werden immer niedriger. Wir haben was gehört von der Weideschlachtung vor Ort. Das kann man in kleinen Mengen mit Sicherheit auch machen, aber wir brauchen auch in der Schlachtbranche Innovation. Man sollte sich überlegen, dass die Ketten besser sind, dass wir die Anzahl der Schlachtstätten auch halten, wenn nicht sogar erhöhen, damit die Tiertransporte einfach nicht noch weiträumiger sind. Und wenn man dann auch sieht, dass zum Beispiel über die Schadnagerbekämpfung diskutiert wird, dass eine dauerhafte Beköderung zurückgefahren werden soll oder verboten werden soll.
Das sind eigentlich die Hauptprobleme, die die Tierseuchen verbreiten. Und hier sollte man auch in anderen DGs mal drüber nachdenken, ob das Verbot der Dauerbeköderung wirklich sinnvoll ist im Rahmen des Tierwohls. Vielen Dank.
Dario Nardella
Dario, please.
Thank you, Chair. Dieci anni dall'entrata in vigore, cinque anni dalla sua piena applicazione sono un'importante occasione per fare un bilancio. E i progressi in effetti sono reali. Siamo passati da un quadro frammentato a un sistema europeo più armonizzato, incentrato sulla prevenzione e la risposta rapida, come abbiamo visto. Tuttavia, vorrei dire, l'attuazione rimane ancora insufficiente e disomogenea.
Nessun paese ha ancora raggiunto il livello di armonizzazione previsto e questo a dieci anni dall'entrata in vigore non è, secondo me, accettabile. Allora chiedo alla Commissione di intensificare gli sforzi, in particolare per quanto riguarda le visite di salute animale basate sul rischio, la sorveglianza e le misure di biosicurezza. Vorrei poi sollevare un elemento che considero prioritario. La legge prevede la possibilità di uniformare e semplificare i movimenti degli animali da compagnia tra Stati membri attraverso atti delegati. In questo contesto la Commissione stava valutando un passaporto digitale per gli animali da compagnia, strumento che abbiamo sostenuto attivamente nei negoziati sul benessere e la tracciabilità di cani e gatti.
Vorrei sapere a che punto sono le discussioni con gli Stati membri su questo punto specifico, perché i cittadini europei che viaggiano con i propri animali meritano una risposta chiara con una prospettiva chiara che riguarda i loro animali e ovviamente i loro diritti. Grazie.
Valérie Deloge
Valérie Deloge for Patriots.
La Commission nous présente dans sa première évaluation la réglementation Animal Health Law comme un cadre robuste, moderne et fondé sur les risques. C'est très bien, mais derrière cette présentation, une question doit être posée : à qui rend-on service avec l'évolution de cette législation et qui paie l'addition ? J'espère pas nos éleveurs, parce que depuis des années, nous demandons toujours davantage à nos éleveurs européens : davantage de traçabilité, de sécurité, de contrôle, de contraintes, des visites sanitaires, des nouvelles obligations administratives, et j'en passe. Votre rapport reconnaît également que dans certains cas, les coûts ont été supérieurs à ce qui avait été prévu. Et surtout, vous reconnaissez que l'absence de mécanisme de compensation adéquat fait peser une partie de cette charge sur les agriculteurs.
Résultat, nos filières porcines et avicoles ont énormément évolué. Nos éleveurs ont investi, adapté leurs bâtiments et leurs pratiques. Et malgré cela, l'élevage européen continue de reculer. En dix ans, nous avons perdu près de 9 % de notre cheptel porcin et 10 % de notre cheptel bovin. Pendant ce temps, on ouvre notre marché à des produits issus de systèmes de production qui ne sont pas soumis aux mêmes exigences.
Votre rapport affirme que les exigences sanitaires à l'entrée de l'Union sont strictes, aussi strictes que celles appliquées en Europe. On aimerait y croire, mais vous venez de nous démontrer que c'était très compliqué, voire impossible avec le Mercosur. Alors qu'en est-il des conditions dans lesquelles les animaux sont élevés et les produits obtenus ? Comment expliquer à un éleveur européen qu'on lui demande toujours plus en matière de biodiversité, de biosécurité, de surveillance, de bien-être animal, de traçabilité, alors que nous continuons à mettre en concurrence sa production avec des produits issus de systèmes très différents ?
Je pense notamment aux parcs d'engraissement bovins au Brésil où là encore on peut aussi parler d'où est-ce qu'on peut parler de bien-être animal ou encore aussi dans le maintien du mulesing dans la filière ovine australienne. C'est là que votre rapport doit aller beaucoup plus loin. Dans cette stratégie pour l'élevage, vous annoncez vouloir introduire des conditions de réciprocité et des exigences équivalentes pour certains produits importés. Je souhaite donc savoir très concrètement comment la Commission compte-t-elle passer des déclarations de principe à des exigences réellement véritablement réciproques et opposables.
Bert-Jan Ruissen
Bert-Jan Ruissen, please.
Dank u wel voorzitter en dank aan de Commissie voor de evaluatie van de diergezondheidswet. Ik wil twee vragen stellen. Allereerst over de inzet van de Commissie op meer gebruik maken van vaccinaties, wat op zichzelf natuurlijk een loofwaardig streven is. Alleen de grote vraag is: accepteren onze handelspartners dat? De Commissie geeft aan: nou we werken aan draagvlak bij onze belangrijke handelspartners.
Kan de Commissie aangeven of ze daar verschuivingen in ziet ten goede? Kun je aangeven, kun je zien dat het draagvlak voor vaccinaties zeg maar mondiaal gezien, ook als het gaat over onze belangrijke handelspartners, neemt dat draagvlak toe of is dat nog een heel moeizaam traject wat we met z'n allen aan het doorlopen zijn? Ik ben eerlijk gezegd bang dat dat laatste het geval is en dan gaan we natuurlijk met onze vaccinatiestrategie voor enorme problemen zorgen, want ja dan kunnen we onze producten onvoldoende afzetten op de wereldmarkt en richting onze handelspartners. Een serieus punt van zorg. Tweede vraag, dat gaat over de nationale implementatie door de verschillende lidstaten.
De evaluatie stelt vast dat de nationale implementatie nogal sterk verschilt. De Commissie heeft een aantal punten aangegeven op dat vlak wat ze doet om die nationale implementatie te verbeteren. De vraag die ik daarbij heb is: kan de Commissie aangeven hoeveel audits ze heeft uitgevoerd de afgelopen jaren bij de verschillende lidstaten op dit vlak en kan de Commissie misschien ook een stukje toelichting geven op wat ze nou doet op het moment dat ze in een audit diverse tekortkomingen vaststelt? Wat zijn de consequenties daar dan van? Misschien kan de Commissie daar nog wat op reflecteren.
Dank.
Elsi Katainen
Thank you very much, Elsi Katainen.
Kiitos puheenjohtaja ja kiitos komission edustajalle esittelystä. Eläinten hyvinvointilainsäädännön uudistukselle on pitävät perusteet, onhan edellisestä kulunut jo kymmenen vuotta aikaa. Taustalla on tietysti se, että tutkimus ja tieto on esimerkiksi eläinten lajityypillisestä käyttäytymisestä päivittynyt ja tutkimustietoa tulee koko ajan lisää. Tää asian ympärillä käyty julkinen keskustelu, poliittinen keskustelu on valitettavasti hyvin tunnepitoista ja ääripäihin keskittyvää, eikä asioista saada neuvoteltua sellaisia järkeviä kompromisseja, eikä eläinten hyvinvointi parane siellä, missä sen pitäisi parantua. Aloitteet kesällä julkaistusta kotieläinstrategiasta on tervetulleita, koska niissä on kyse koko sektorin kilpailukyvystä myöskin.
Lisäksi ilmastonmuutos etenee ja tuo yhä enemmän sään ääri-ilmiöitä, jotka vaikuttaa myös eläimiin, kuten esimerkiksi lämpöstressiä ja uusia eläintauteja, joihin vastaamiseksi on löydettävä ratkaisuja ja viljelijät eivät saa jäädä yksin näiden uusien haasteiden kanssa. Ne väistämättä vaikuttaa tuotantotasoihin ja sitä kautta heijastelee myös eurooppalaiseen ruokaturvaan ja omavaraisuuteen. Ja mä kysynkin, että millä tavalla komissio on ottamassa nämä uudet eläintaudit huomioon tässä uudistuksessa?
Ja on myös tärkeätä, että tuleva uudistus lähtee enemmänkin kannusteista kuin kielloista. On jäsenmaita, joissa eläinten hyvinvointikriteerit ovat huomattavasti EU:n keskitasoa tiukemmat ja niiden noudattamista valvotaan ja myöskin sanktioidaan tiukasti, ja tämä osoittaa, että uudistukset on tehtävissä kilpailukykyisesti. Itse asiassa eläinten hyvinvointi lisää tuotannon kilpailukykyä ja myös kuluttajien keskuudessa. Hyvinvointi on kuitenkin koko tuotantoketjuasia, ei pelkästään viljelijöiden vastuulla. Mä haluaisinkin kysyä vielä, että kuinka komissio aikoo varmistaa sen, että ne jäsenmaat, jotka on tehneet eläinten hyvinvointitoimia jo ennakoivasti, eivät joudu kärsimään siitä?
Edelläkävijöitä ei pitäisi rangaista, vaan niitten viljelijöiden pitäisi saada sille tuotteelleen arvonlisä. Kiitos.
Thomas Waitz
Thank you, Chair, and thanks to the Commission for the presentation. I try not to repeat questions already asked by colleagues. A general question, I mean, also your assessment shows that the rules are applied very differently in different member states, but the regulation as such has quite a big, offers quite a big flexibility in terms of implementation. And okay, yes, we need a certain flexibility, but if flexibility goes too far, we have a distortion of markets. We have unfair conditions because if in one country vaccines are applied while in other, in the other country you have to cull massive herds, that is, might have really a negative impact also on the fairness that we treat our farmers with.
And I, I mean, Madame Delosh now left, but I think every measure that contains animal diseases is in favor of breeders and is in favor of farmers because I think one of the worst things that can happen to a breeder if he or she has to cull the whole herd, sometimes generations in the family have been breeding these animals and, and this is the success. So, do you share this, this assessment and what can we do against flexibility going towards total unfairness? A second question, you also mentioned that TRACES, so the system where we register all the animal transports, have helped to modernize and simplify. I mean, we're all well aware that live animal transports also bear a certain risk of spreading diseases or multi-resistant bacteria. Please, can you give us a bit of an answer how you see it has been modernized and simplified so, so to maybe further invest into TRACES?
And last but not least, vaccines. It has been touched upon a colleague already. The fact is if, the fact that we vaccine, vaccine our animals and then kind of the, in the analysis afterwards, you can't distinguish between, you know, the anti, the reactions of the immunity system to a vaccine from the reactions of the immunity system to the actual infection, that this is then basically closing the gateways to, to export markets. So is the question on, on vaccines and the use and the uptake of vaccines, is it due to a lack of vets or to a lack of finances or to a lack of information? Please, the one or the other word on this.
Thank you very much.
Luke Ming Flanagan
And I think it's important to have such legislation, I believe, obviously for the welfare of animals, but also for the public to have confidence, because if you look at any surveys on what's important to people, animal welfare is important. And while this legislation is important, I think how we develop the next Common Agricultural Policy will also be important when it comes to this, and in particular when it comes to who is most in need. And when defining is it extensive or is it intensive beef farmers that are those that are in most in need, and we need to look at the fact that already, like we've seen over the years, the direction of travel with the Commission with schemes in Ireland whereby farmers were incentivized to reduce suckler numbers and basically to move away from what is the most animal welfare-friendly way of producing beef. So for me, while this legislation is important, we need to start at the bottom and to support farmers who do farm in a way that respects animal welfare. And for me, when it comes to farming beef, the best type of farming is suckler farming.
So in the next CAP, whatever this legislation does, in the next CAP, depending on who is defined as the most in need, and for me, the people who farm in the most gentle way, best for animal welfare, most sustainable from the point of view of inputs, they should be the most in need. And for me, that's where animal welfare will be decided in the future.
Benoit Cassart
Benoît Cassart, please.
Merci Monsieur le Président. Le rapport d'évaluation est clair. La loi de santé animale constitue une avancée dans la réponse aux défis sanitaires auxquels l'élevage est confronté. Mais certaines lacunes subsistent. Un, le manque de synchronisation et d'harmonisation entre les États membres pour lutter contre les maladies.
Par exemple, la Belgique se bat pour obtenir prochainement un statut indemne IBR alors que l'Allemagne l'a déjà depuis longtemps et que les Pays-Bas n'en font pas une priorité dans l'état actuel des choses. Cela rend la lutte plus difficile. Deuxièmement, une demande du Parlement est de favoriser le développement des vaccins DIVA, les vaccins marqués, ainsi que la possibilité de créer un nouveau statut indemne avec vaccination pour les troupeaux. La Commission envisage-t-elle enfin d'avancer sur le sujet ? Il est grand temps que la loi tienne compte des avancées scientifiques.
Troisièmement, le Parlement a également demandé de travailler sur les barrières commerciales liées à la vaccination. La Commission a-t-elle engagé une discussion avec l'OMSA et ses partenaires commerciaux sur le sujet ? Ne serait-il pas temps de gérer les déplacements des animaux au sein de l'Union en fonction des statuts sanitaires et non des frontières nationales ? Merci.
Gilles Pennelle
Gilles Pennelle, please.
Oui, merci. Deux points. Premier point, le transport des animaux vivants accentué par le libre-échange aggrave la propagation des virus. L'Organisation mondiale de la santé animale indique que le déplacement d'animaux infectés est responsable de la propagation sur de longues distances de virus entre animaux. La crise de la FCO a rendu cette question concrète pour les éleveurs.
En octobre 2024, alors que les exportations de bovins français étaient suspendues et que des régions entières étaient confinées, un syndicat agricole a découvert en Gironde, en France, des transits de broutards irlandais à destination de l'Espagne.
Cela a été vécu par nos éleveurs comme irresponsable et injuste. Deuxième point. Si des crédits européens importants sont consacrés à la recherche sur les vaccins, il n'y a pas de véritable stratégie industrielle européenne assurant la capacité de production en cas d'épizootie. L'Agence européenne des médicaments reconnaît depuis longtemps qu'il existe des problèmes de disponibilité de certains vaccins vétérinaires, notamment lorsque le marché est réduit ou lorsqu'il s'agit de maladies rares ou émergentes. Pourquoi l'UE a-t-elle organisé après le COVID des capacités européennes permanentes de développement et de production rapide de vaccins humains, alors qu'un dispositif industriel comparable n'existe pas clairement pour les grandes épizooties animales ?
Luis-Vicențiu Lazarus
Domnule președinte, dragi colegi, după cum știți, România nu are guvern de vreo patru luni și ceva și acest guvern, sigur, demis și incompetent, nu a fost o problemă pentru Comisia Europeană, practic, atâta timp cât a semnat componenta de SAFE, adică 17 miliarde s-a împrumutat România ca să-i dea altora și după aceea să rămână datoare decenii. Dar acest guvern, sigur că da, a afectat și alte domenii, cum ar fi, iată, agricultura, zootehnia. În România, fermierii, în momentul în care s-au trezit că li s-a interzis să mai exporte chiar și în țările terțe, pentru că de un an de zile nu mai exportau în Uniunea Europeană, ovine și caprine, au făcut mitinguri și manifestații. Vă pot spune că în acest moment unii dintre fermieri se află în arestul poliției din România, de la București, câte 30 de zile. De ce ?
Pentru că au manifestat pentru drepturile lor. S-au ales cu gaze, bătăi și arest. Unul dintre cetățenii care sunt arestați nu a avut niciodată niciun fel de amendă și n-a avut niciun fel de problemă cu autoritățile. Tatăl lui, în momentul când a aflat, a făcut infarct zilele trecute, mai precis alaltăieri, și a murit. Are Comisia Europeană pe conștiință acest om ?
Pentru că, până la urmă, Comisia Europeană este cea care a hotărât ca România să nu mai exporte animale nici în Uniunea Europeană, nici în țările terțe. Acuma am văzut că ați vorbit despre vaccinuri. În România ați întrebat fermierii dacă sunt de acord cu aceste vaccinuri ? Pentru că ei nu sunt de acord. Fermierii și ciobanii remarcă faptul că, dacă animalele vor fi vaccinate, nu vor mai putea produce brânză și produse lactate în varianta tradițională.
Mai mult decât atât, prețul laptelui va scădea la jumătate și zilele trecute a fost sunat un cioban care are o un șeptel foarte mare de către unul dintre cei mai importanți oameni care exportă ovine din România. Și i-a spus în felul următor : dacă vaccinați oile, nu vă vom mai da mai mult de 11 lei în loc de 22 de lei. Deci asta înseamnă că va cădea prețul la jumătate. În aceste condiții, cine își asumă aceste lucruri ? Cine va recupera pierderile respective ?
Plătește Comisia Europeană ? Plătește România toate aceste pierderi ? Ori ceea ce se ceea ce e interesant pentru Comisia Europeană și pentru oficialitățile din România este doar să lichideze șeptelul din România.
Christine Singer
Tierseuchen sind für unsere Landwirte schon lange keine abstrakte Gefahr mehr. Gerade in den letzten Monaten haben wir wieder gesehen, wie schnell der Ausbruch ganze Betriebe und Regionen treffen kann. Und deshalb begrüße ich auch, dass die Kommission in ihrer Evaluierung dieses Tiergesundheitsrecht Prävention stärker in den Mittelpunkt rückt und auch einen breiteren Ansatz von Impfungen prüfen möchte. Für mich ist dabei entscheidend, wir müssen handeln können, bevor aus einem einzelnen Ausbruch eine große Krise wird. Und deshalb meine erste Frage: Wo sieht die Kommission konkret Möglichkeiten, Impfungen künftig stärker als präventives Instrument einzusetzen und wo sieht sie die Möglichkeit, die Kategorisierung von Tierseuchen flexibler an neue Entwicklungen anzupassen?
Ja, vielen Dank.
Und zweitens geht es mir um die Verhältnismäßigkeit der Maßnahmen. Regionalisierung ist ein wichtiges Instrument, damit ein lokal begrenzter Seuchenausbruch nicht unnötig weitreichende Folgen für Tierhalter, Transport und Handel hat. Wo sieht die Kommission hier nach ihrer Evaluierung noch Verbesserungsbedarf? Denn meiner Meinung nach muss unser Ziel sein, Tierseuchen früh zu erkennen, konsequent zu bekämpfen und gleichzeitig die Auswirkungen auf nicht betroffene Betriebe und Regionen so gering wie möglich zu halten. Danke schön.
Daniel Buda
Domnule Francisco, înainte să vă dau cuvântul, aș vrea să ridic aceeași problemă legată de vaccinare și de pesta micilor rumegătoare, care în momentul de față știți foarte bine că afectează nu doar România, o țară care are 12 milioane de oi, ci și Bulgaria, Cipru și Croația. Și se pun următoarele probleme, stimați colegi, pentru că astăzi suntem cele patru, cinci țări, mâine puteți să fiți dumneavoastră cu o astfel de problemă sau cu alte efective de animale. Înțeleg și medicii veterinari aici, din păcate, nu ne-au dat un răspuns coerent, dar aștept de la dumneavoastră o chestiune să răspundeți legat de ceea ce înseamnă vaccinarea și anume că dacă se vor vaccina aceste animale, apropo de strategia de vaccinare, se spune că nu se vor mai putea exporta carcase și produse lactate în următorii doi ani de zile de la efectivele de animale vaccinate. Unii medici veterinari ne spun că este o inepție chestiunea aceasta și că nu este în regulă, deoarece acest virus al pestei micilor rumegătoare dispare la o temperatură oarecare, inclusiv la razele soarelui, el este mort. Este complicat să explicăm fermierilor să-și vaccineze oile în condițiile în care timp de doi ani de zile nu-și vor putea vinde produsele, pentru că e chestiune până la urmă de supraviețuire, ca să ne înțelegem despre ce vorbim.
Doi, și eu sunt depozitarul acestor acorduri comerciale încheiate cu țările terțe, pentru că am întrebat serviciile veterinare din România, nu-mi permit să vin să ridic o astfel de problemă la nivelul Parlamentului European, și avem acorduri comerciale cu țările terțe din zona arabă care ne spun că vor importa animale sau animalele care sunt vaccinate pentru acest virus al pestei micilor rumegătoare. Cunosc disponibilitatea Comisiei Europene de a furniza un milion trei sute de mii de doze de vaccin către aceste, mă rog, către România și nu numai, pentru că repet, nu doar noi suntem aici, însă întrebarea mea este către dumneavoastră dacă puteți merge cu un pas în față legat de ceea ce înseamnă extinderea acestor acorduri comerciale către țările terțe acolo unde acestea doresc să facă acest lucru, ca să ne înțelegem. Adică nu o chestiune care să le-o impunem noi, aceste state acceptă să primească animalele care sunt vaccinate, mă rog, pentru acest, pentru acest virus. Dar revin la prima chestiune: cum explicăm fermierilor să-și vaccineze animalele în condițiile în care timp de doi ani de zile, pe actualul regulament pe care îl avem în vigoare, care repet, nu este la unison acceptat de către medicii veterinari, nu-și vor putea exporta produsele pe care ei le obțin, pentru că totuși vorbim de niște animale, cum este oaia, care produce în fiecare an câte un miel și așa mai departe, nu este la fel ca și vaca care produce poate o dată, nu știu, la doi ani de zile până crește să fie abatorizată.
E o situație foarte complicată și avem nevoie de niște răspunsuri ferme, pentru că nu-s de acord cu tot ce ați spus domnul Lazarus pe multe aspecte, însă am avut în stradă 20.000 de fermieri care și-au strigat nevoile și acești oameni sunt în pragul disperării, pentru că viața lor, familiile lor, a copiilor lor depinde de ce se întâmplă de la nivelul Comisiei Europene. Și avem nevoie de așteptări ferme pentru că ne confruntăm cu o secetă foarte severă, când vedem că accesul la furaje este aproape inexistent, am avut probleme cu accesul la apă, ori dacă vii și cu ceea ce înseamnă accesul la valorificarea acestor animale, să le abatorizezi și să faci cu ele ce anume, e complicat. Și concluzionez cu o chestiune care este ridicată și la care trebuie să dăm răspunsuri. Faptul că se sacrifică animale care n-au fost neapărat, să spun așa, certificate ca fiind bolnave, ci doar pentru că au făcut parte dintr-un colectiv oarecare, ele sunt sacrificate. Și mai e partea de despăgubiri.
Da, avem nevoie de răspunsuri ferme și legat de ce înseamnă despăgubirea fermierilor, pentru că nu ei sunt vinovați de faptul că aceste boli au apărut. Nu putem să spunem că Dumnezeu le-a dat, le ducem până la urmă, dar este important ca acești oameni să fie sprijiniți pentru că altfel, dincolo de faptul că ce-o să vedem în stradă, este o altă poveste, dar discutăm aici de securitate alimentară care este până la urmă o chestiune pe care trebuie să o gestionăm în mod responsabil cu toții. Aveți cuvântul pentru cât timp doriți dumneavoastră.
Francisco Reviriego Gordejo
Thank you, Mr. President, for the generosity with the time and thank you to the rest of the MEPs for the many questions that were raised in response to our short presentation on the outcome of the evaluation of the Animal Health Law. I try to group by theme instead of replying to each and any of the intervention because there are some repetitions and some of the issues raised are of major importance. There were few of you, or not so few of you, that mentioned animal welfare. Animal welfare is relevant in this exercise because we have detected that we can improve the coherence and we can improve the clarification of the interfaces in which two separated policies operate: animal welfare and animal health. And what is evident is that sick animals do not have good animal welfare.
So the first issue that I would like to clarify, that our priority is to have healthy animals, not sick animals. And consequently, later on, you may discuss what you understand for sufficient animal welfare or not, but the exercise does not intend to elaborate on animal welfare. It intends to elaborate on why we are suffering uneven implementation of the rules. We are detecting places where the implementation is almost perfect and this is leading to success on many areas, and also other areas in the Union that they are facing specific challenges. I don't think there is bad intention on anybody.
You mentioned the farmers, the farmers are suffering from diseases, they don't enjoy having diseases, but there is something systemic that we are not detecting as regards the implementation. What can we do to improve the implementation? Well, we have the stick, it was mentioned here, the audits, my colleague Erik Thevenard spoke before me on how important is to have sufficient audit capacity to verify that the implementation on the spot is sufficient. But we should not just stay with the stick, we should have either the carrot or something that looks like a carrot. And this is training, awareness, and support to the farmers.
Training can be provided to the competent authorities through our Better Training for Safer Food instrument that provides already for a proficient way of improving the implementation on the authorities' side.
And there are funds from the CAP that can be used to improve the biosecurity and therefore the implementation of the main provisions of the Animal Health Law, that is having sufficiently biosecurity. Related to this is the flexibility versus the unfairness when they compete in the same production sector. It's true we can only take note, but the flexibility is needed. Considering the variety of farming systems and the variety of the distribution of the pathogens, we need to allow for a certain level of flexibility and to minimize the impact on trade. And this we keep an eye.
And this is solved by legislation. Legislation is what is telling us what is correct or not correct. Maybe it's not the same being correct than being fair, but at least we are approaching the concept of fairness by trying to be correct. And we use other instruments. It has been mentioned digitalization.
Digitalization for the movement of livestock through the TRACES IT instrument has been a Copernican change. We now know a lot of things in real time and we are facilitating the production of the certificates and we are reducing the burden for everybody. This is a good example. Moving towards digitalization of the passport for pets, while important, is in another dimension. This is a tiny thing to improve the life of the citizens, but keep the idea that digitalization is already quite exploited by TRACES.
I'm letting for the end the many intervention on vaccines and vaccination and the difficulties to get the vaccines on time. For that, I have already indicated, although briefly, that we intend to facilitate the dialogue between the manufacturers, the authorities that are those that will enable the use of the vaccines, and of course the producers, because the appetite should come from the countryside. It should come from the producers and the farmers. When colleagues, when you are telling us and very straightforward, that we need to convince the farmers, that the farmers are against vaccination, there is room for improvement there. They should understand that vaccination, when recommended, is the best way out.
And in the particular case raised here of Romania for PPR, there is no doubt that vaccination is the only way forward to get rid of one or two viruses affecting sheep and goat. Because if you have the country infected, there will be no trade. If you have your population vaccinated leading to an elimination of the pathogen, trade opportunities will occur. We are fully aware and we are in direct contact, I would say on a daily basis, and I'm not exaggerating when I say daily, with the Romanian authorities because there are some bottlenecks in our legislation on the technicalities of a small part of an annex of a delegated regulation, and we know where the bottleneck is. And we are already taking action to solve this.
And by the time that Romania has vaccinated, this legislation would have been amended. And there is a good example. I'm not inventing anything new. The vaccination implemented in France, Spain, and Italy against lumpy skin disease, dermatose nodulaire contagieuse, has been successful. The three countries acting in a coordinated manner, simultaneously, fast and efficient, has led to the eradication of this virus.
It has disappeared, almost disappeared. If there is an outbreak tomorrow, you can blame me, but it will be something sporadic.
The level of coverage of the population is excellent with a legislation that is compatible. We have an example there, we will get inspiration on how to adapt the rules for the small ruminants to the reality with common sense and with science. And we are always open to refine the rules. And as regards other diseases for which we detect that there is an appetite to continue vaccination, but vaccination is not compatible with the free status, there we need to reflect. And we need to see until which limit can we stretch the possibilities of moving vaccinated animals in a non-infected territory.
Because vaccination changes the population. A population that is vaccinated is safer, is good, is what we want, but it poses also a challenge for surveillance, for detecting the virus. Vaccination is in one way like fog. It does not allow us to see the diseases. And therefore we need to do something else.
In a naive, non-vaccinated and disease-free population, as you have a new virus, you see it. If the vaccination is, if the population is vaccinated, you don't see that clearly the index case. You may see the third or the fourth. Therefore action needs to be taken. That's why vaccination, a vaccinated population is a burden.
It's safe, yes, but it closes our eyes slightly. And therefore we need lenses, and lenses cost money. Those having a vaccinated population need to do more than those not having such vaccinated population, and this costs money. And there we enter the debate whether it is worth or not, and whether there is willingness to accept vaccinated animals or not. And we are stretching the limit of our rules with the clear understanding that a vaccinated population poses a challenge.
It needs to be managed differently from a non-vaccinated population. Last element that I would like to bring as a reaction to the intervention of the honorable members is the categorization of the diseases. Yes, on this I would like to be very clear. We are going to revise whether the criteria we use, that are the criteria given by you, are fit for purpose or not. The impact, the intrinsic characteristics of the virus, the distribution of the diseases now due to climate changes, this is changing our perception.
And in due course we will bring ideas to the House, to the Member States, to the stakeholder, indicating whether we think that those criteria and the system is still fit for purpose or not. And whenever there is a low-hanging fruit, when we realize that the category in which we have allocated a disease is not the best one, we will go straightforward for changing the categorization of a particular disease in the light of science and experience. We did it recently with bluetongue and epizootic hemorrhagic disease. It's going to enter into application the exercise of recategorization of bluetongue by the first of November. And this can be repeated as many times as needed, but for that we need to have science, experience and to build consensus.
I think that with this I have replied to the most prominent questions and I'm happy to continue the dialogue whenever you feel that is necessary. Thank you, Mr. President.
Daniel Buda
Domnule director, mulțumim foarte mult pentru explicațiile dumneavoastră. N-am atins niciunul dintre noi o problemă care este foarte stringentă, nu doar în România, și pe care v-aș ruga să o evaluați în mod adecvat, și anume tratarea pestei africane, deoarece am fost în Italia și în România la fel, aceeași chestiune. Fermele care se află în proximitatea unei ferme unde s-a identificat virusul, acea fermă, porcii din acea fermă sunt eutanasiați, fermierul este despăgubit, dar fermierii care se află pe o rază de 10 kilometri nu au posibilitatea să-și vândă animalele și nu sunt despăgubiți. Rugămintea mea este, repet, nu este doar o chestiune din România, am găsit-o în Italia, în Franța pe unde am fost cu Comisia de Agricultură, să aveți în vedere această chestiune pentru că este profund nedrept pentru fermierii care se află în zona de protecție să nu-și poată valorifica suinele și pagubele, suferă pagube. Cine îi despăgubește până la urmă pe acești pe acești fermieri?
Dar e o temă pe care cu siguranță o să o să găsim momente să să discutăm și rugămintea mea este: atenție, nu ignorați ce se întâmplă în România, pentru că am avut fermieri în stradă. Mulțumim pentru sprijinul Comisiei și la modul sincer apreciez eforturile pe care pe care le-ați făcut, dar avem nevoie de niște răspunsuri ferme pentru că animalele n-au ce să mănânce, ca să fie foarte clar. Mulțumim încă o dată tare mult pentru tot. Luke, please, you have the floor.
Luke Ming Flanagan
Thank you, chairperson. What I want to bring up under AOB is the situation on the NRPP and the shadows meeting that we had the week before last, where it was established that there was a majority of groups who are in favor of retaining the Common Agriculture Policy and rejecting the Commission's proposals to put it into an umbrella regulation, which would basically potentially see the end of CAP forever. Now, I think it's important that we air this. People are talking about it, people are ringing me about it, but I attempted to get it put on the agenda, but unfortunately that didn't happen. But here it is.
We now have a situation where the meeting next Thursday, this Thursday coming, has been cancelled. And I'm just wondering what is happening. Is it a case that the AGRI Committee gets to express an opinion as long as the right people agree with us, or is it a case that the AGRI Committee gets to express an opinion and we get to discuss it and we stand by what that opinion is? I'm just wondering what's happening. The meeting was called off, really important meeting.
I was looking forward to it. At last I saw a majority, a majority that everyone thought was going to be there in the first place, evolve. So I'm just wondering what's happening, what's happened to the meeting.
Elsi Katainen
Elsi Katainen, please.
Joo, kiitoksia. AGRI:n puolesta vastaavana näissä neuvotteluissa, niin mielelläni tuohon vastaan. Kysehän oli siis Strasbourgissa nimenomaan AGRI-neuvotteluista, joissa oli vain AGRI-varjoneuvottelijat paikalla. Ja tuota toisaalta sitten olivat REGI-neuvottelijat ja BUDG-neuvottelijat. Meidän täytyy nyt muistaa se lähtökohta, että tämä ei ole yksin AGRI:n neuvoteltavissa oleva asia, vaan tämä on kolmen eri valiokunnan tämmöinen joint-neuvottelutapa.
Tämä ei ole pelkästään tämän porukan neuvoteltavissa. Näissä muissa BUDG-valiokunnassa ja REGI-valiokunnassa ei ole ollut tätä samaa lopputulemaa, vaan siellä neuvottelut ovat edenneet ihan normaalisti. Nyt tosiaan niin AGRI-neuvotteluporukassa vain sitten tuli tämä pysähdys. Ja seuraavaksi asiahan etenee sillä tavalla, että toivottavasti hyvin pian tätä asiaa käsitellään tuolla puheenjohtajistossa, elikkä ryhmien puheenjohtajien kokouksessa, jossa sitten arvioivat keskenään, että että miten se asia tästä etenee.
Tämä on vähän niinku poikkeuksellinen tilanne ja senkin takia on hyvä, että nyt sitten siellä arvioivat kuinka tää asia etenee. Ja mä en osaa tällä hetkellä sitten sanoa, että mikä se lopputulema siellä on. Meillähän jäi sillä tavalla siellä Strasbourgissa se kokous kesken, että meillä olisi ollut sitten muitakin kompromissikohtia siellä neuvoteltavana, mutta emme voineet niihin edetä, koska se kompromissi yksi, elikkä koko tämän uuden rahoitusarkkitehtuurin osalta tuli sitten tän Flanaganin kuvailema tilanne, elikkä tuota kolme ryhmää sitä komissioesitystä puolsi ja loput ryhmät sitä vastustivat. Ja vielä toistan sen, että nää Regi- ja budjettivaliokunnissa ei tätä tällaista keskustelua ole käyty, elikkä siellä on hyväksytty niinkuin niinkuin tuota kaikki ryhmät muutenkin ovat toisaalla sitten hyväksyneet tämän tämän uuden arkkitehtuurin. Elikkä tällainen on tilanne.
Mä en osaa sanoa, miten sitten siellä kopissa, elikkä puheenjohtajien kokouksessa asia tullaan päättämään. Toivon sieltä myöskin todella pian sitä vastausta, että me päästään jatkaan niitä niitä neuvotteluja siltä osin kun pystymme jatkamaan.
Daniel Buda
Mulțumesc foarte mult Elsi pentru explicațiile furnizate. Domnule Flanagan, suntem cu toții la curent cu evoluția discuțiilor legate de aceste aspecte. Evident că ne urmărim cu toții én limitele procedurilor pe care le avem la dispoziție. Conferință președinților își va spune punctul de vedere cu privire la aceste aspecte, calea de urmat. Aveți posibilitatea ca coordonatorii cu siguranță sunt mă rog înștiințate legat de evoluția acestor discuții și én măsura én care vor aprecia de cuviință se va pune pe ordinea de zi să discutăm și én cadrul Comisiei AGRI aceste aspecte, dar eu cred că ce este énșelept én momentul de față să așteptăm poziția din Conferință președinților să vedem cum vor evolua lucrurile.
Sigur e o situație complicată, complexă, dar noi din punct de vedere procedural aici la nivelul Comisiei de Agricultură astăzi nu avem posibilitatea decât așa cum ai spus tu la punctul diverse să atragem atenția asupra acestei chestiuni. După Conferință președinților coordonatorii noștri émpreună cu președinta comisiei va decide care este calea de urmat cea mai cea mai bună. Dar mulțumim că ai ridicat acest subiect repet én dezbatere cunoscându-l de altfel toți colegii noștri. Sorry. Nemai fiind alte puncte pe ordinea de zi vă mulțumesc foarte mult pentru participare.
Mulțumim interpreților, staff-ului tehnic și vă doresc o seară plăcută én continuare.