7
Feb
2024
Watch
Empowering farmers and rural communities - a dialogue towards sustainable and fairly rewarded EU agriculture (debate)
Madam President, agriculture needs help. So let's really focus on useful and effective solutions. We deal with fair prices, unfair trade practices, we deal with the impact of foreign imports, we deal with ever-increasing prices of inputs. But please, let us avoid an argument that is false, crooked and that says here that, while nature conservation is contrary to agriculture, it is an obstacle to it and must be reduced. This is a very dangerous claim. It's not good for anything. In this spirit, I must criticise the Commission's move to open up new areas of eels for agricultural use this year. It has no economic significance. We are talking about the decimal percentages of land on which we want to grow alfalfa and lentils at a time of overproduction, which precipitates prices. For the protection of nature, and these areas also concern the natural lands, this is a disastrous decision, because it threatens the survival of critically endangered species, who find the last suitable conditions in the agricultural landscape on the eels. Such a narrative, such concessions are of no benefit to anyone except the far right, which has presented itself today with an outcry against the Green Deal. And on these false real claims, you've long since claimed your copyright.