Mr. Peter Welch:

There is a sad complication in that the definition of young farmer in terms of the EU schemes is 40, which seems young to me these days. EUROSTAT and DG Agri, which collect some of the numbers on this, tend to collect data for farmers under the age of 35 and farmers between 35 and 45 and so on. One cannot get a set of statistics that quite match the policy we are aiming for. It is quite reasonable to think the figure given is close to the reality, possibly across Europe. What we see across Europe is that only 6% of farmers are under 35. There are many complicated structures around the different member states. In some cases farms are family businesses and many members of the family have a role in the farm. Sometimes they are held by companies. We have not done an exhaustive examination of all the elements. Mr. Wojciechowski indicated in the presentation that it is in the member states where there is a scheme for looking after older farmers that one sees a better performance. It is correct to say that in Germany a farmer cannot claim an old-age pension unless one ceases to be a farmer. Germany has one of the better performances in terms of generational renewal. There is a relationship between all these policies. Sometimes it goes beyond our audit scope and into general social policies.