Seanad debates
Wednesday, 2 July 2003
Common Agricultural Policy: Statements.
That is the second reason I welcome the reform of the CAP. It will free Europe, and Ireland in particular, from what I call the straitjacket of an immoral policy on world trade. As I have pointed out in this House on many occasions, it is not only the people of Europe who are affected by the Common Agricultural Policy, it is not just the citizens of Europe who have to pay a higher price in tax and health, it is the world as well. That policy has had an even greater impact on the people of the developing world, by distorting the markets that are available to them to sell their agricultural products. I am thinking in particular of Africa. Not only have we put up barriers to their selling within Europe, as we have done for the last 30 years, but we have also undermined their position in other world markets by dumping our own very heavily subsidised surpluses on them. That is unfair. These are the people who are much worse off than even the poorest people in Europe. That policy, which has been driven by the necessity to support the CAP, is immoral. That was the point Bob Geldof was making to us, correctly so, and these are words that we have used here in the past.
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