Mr. Fabien Santini:

I thank Deputy Fitzmaurice. In regard to the first question, I will repeat myself. It is a convention. In the context of what we call agricultural products, there is a fixed list under the treaty and we cannot expand it. I agree with the Deputy that, on a commonsense basis, fertilisers are used in agriculture. The treaty states that we can only do things according to what the CAP sets out. Agricultural products are listed in an annex to the treaty, but fertiliser is not listed. I cannot do anything about that, but I understand that it does not look like common sense but that is how it is.

The Deputy inquired about concerns in Europe regarding animal welfare. I suppose he is referring to animals having sufficient fodder and feed for animals in that regard. He also asked about concerns relating to food shortages.

As I said in my opening statement, given we only have estimates for the relative prices of fertiliser and agricultural outputs, we do not expect there to be major concern about food security, which includes feed security. This assessment indicates we do not see a concern.

I will take the opportunity to go straight to the Deputy's last question. If we do not have this kind of concern, it is because the EU is a very big net exporter of agrifood products. We are producing much more than we are consuming. We are exporting a lot of dairy products, meats and cereals. We are more than self-sufficient in most of the commodities, with some exceptions we aware of and are looking at. That is also a reason we are not fearful about EU food security. This situation is much more delicate in countries or regions of the world that are not net exporters like we are. In respect of food, we are not at all in the same situation as that for energy. We depend on imports for energy but not for food. The rest of the world depends on us for food. That is why, even with a modest decrease in production because of less use of fertiliser, temporarily, this year, we do not expect any major concern, but we will be attentive to this.

The Deputy asked if state aid rules would explicitly authorise a subsidy for the use of fertiliser. I did not say that. I said there was a framework that authorises member states to take some actions, given the current situation. I do not think I have seen any subsidy to fertilisation businesses in the schemes that have been adopted. I would guess they are probably too operational to be eligible for these kinds of scheme. I am not a specialist on this, but at least the people who are imagining state aid for a member state should reflect on what could be done. There are many other ways to support farmers in this situation that would strictly subsidise mineral fertilisers directly for a certain time. There are a lot of other ways that are less distorting and perhaps even more efficient than just offsetting the simple increase in price.

I will come back to the Deputy's last point. I told him we are largely self-sufficient, but there are still some areas of the agrifood chain where we are not, namely, plant proteins that are mostly, though not only, used for feed, such as soya beans, of which we are large importers. Looking at the other plant proteins used in the EU, we only produce 30% of what we consume so we have a strong dependency on these products. There are some other elements on which we are dependent. We have started to map our dependencies a little, and our abilities, in the agrifood supply chain. We are also dependent on certain additives, especially those used in feed, such as vitamins and mineral seeds that are introduced in feed complements. We depend on a very small number of sources for those. We are also dependent on tropical products, but that is something it is difficult to compensate for. We are rather self-sufficient regarding the rest.

Looking at fertiliser, I said we are dependent on phosphate rock, which we are not producing in Europe. In respect of the rest, nitrogen fertilisers are largely produced in the EU from the base of imported natural gas, while potash is partly produced in local areas of the EU and partly imported, but from a very wide diversity of areas. There is a possibility to diversify. The real dependency is on energy markets. That is clearly something that goes above the need to look at whether the markets for energies are working well. That is part of the toolbox that has been adopted by the Commission, which includes checking we do not have any competition distortions in these markets, that the pricing is working well and there are sufficient buffer stocks, because we have regulation at EU level for buffer stocks in energy.

The last issue is the transition of these energy markets and fertiliser markets. One of the long-term visions for the fertiliser industry, if we read the press, is to go to green ammonia. This means the ammonia that is produced will not depend as much on fossil fuels we do not have. We simply do not have fossil fuels in the EU. The idea of getting rid of this dependency is also on the agenda. It takes time and will not be something that will be solved for the next harvesting year for sure, but it is on the way. It is part of the overall goal of the EU's trade, industry and agricultural policies to achieve what we call an open strategic autonomy. This is not complete self-sufficiency by banning the trade, but having reasonable autonomy in this framework to restore our capacities and not depend on the kind of accidents we have now.