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Zagreb – Croatian Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandroković opened on Thursday the Interparliamentary Conference “The Role of Parliaments in Shaping the Future of Food and Farming”, held in the Croatian Parliament on 22 and 23 November 2018.
Jandroković expressed satisfaction that the Conference gathered a large number of Members of Parliament from 20 EU Member States and officials from three institutions of the Union – the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council, to discuss the future of one of the oldest and most important European policies – the Common Agricultural Policy. He emphasized that it was a confirmation of the Croatian Parliament’s recognizing the institute of interparliamentary cooperation and political dialogue in the EU as important instruments for influencing European decision making, but also the right time and need of a concrete discussion on the Common Agricultural Policy among national parliaments and institutions of the European Union and other stakeholders.
– This discussion is all the more important since the new Multiannual Financial Framework highlights the priorities of the European Union for the forthcoming period, Jandroković said. “The Common Agricultural Policy does not have the same status now as it used to have. Today, the European Union is faced with a number of challenges which necessitated placing increased emphasis on security and the policies contributing to security. But security must be viewed in a broader sense. The European Union will be safe if it assumes the active role of a global player and demonstrates the strength required to protect its citizens from internal and external threats, from terrorism to climate change. And also if it is economically strong and competitive in an increasingly connected world and reassumes the role as a leading trading power. Agriculture plays an important role in this economic empowerment process”, said Croatian Parliament Speaker Jandroković.
Jandroković further said that the Common Agricultural Policy counted amongst the policies that contributed the most to the positioning of the European Union as a global player and that CAP’s further development was extremely important for Croatia. "Besides being a country of tourism, Croatia is also an agricultural country. Agriculture is a key factor in our overall economic development. The Common Agricultural Policy is the framework in which we want to implement an effective Croatian agricultural policy – with an emphasis on ensuring adequate income for agricultural producers, food independence and strong export of value-added products, with a special focus on family farms, for which we want to ensure greater availability of European funds," said the Speaker of Parliament adding that in five years of membership, around 164 thousand family farms benefited from aid and rural development funds.
"And as a result, their products are recognized in the European Union as they bear one of the European quality labels. Today, Croatia has 19 registered products, 8 are in the registration process, and 10 are about to enter the process, which makes us very proud" Jandroković added and reminded that this was a result, among other things, of the fact that nearly a third of the current European budget was devoted to the Common Agricultural Policy and rural development. “Debates about these policies’ future are therefore important to us”, he concluded.
He stressed that Croatia was participating for the first time in the negotiations on the Multiannual Financial Framework which is currently undergoing significant changes and that it was therefore important for us to retain the same resources for cohesion and agricultural policy at the same level – to further strengthen our economy and bring it closer to the level of other Member States.
"We also want that the obligations under our Accession Treaty are respected and that direct payments in agriculture allow our farmers a balanced development and increase their competitiveness and sustainability. We are aware that the Common Agricultural Policy needs to be modernized and adapted to the new circumstances of agricultural prices’ decrease, greater market’s openness and new commitments at the international level due to climate change and sustainable development. We have highlighted the need to modernize the future of the Common Agricultural Policy among the priorities of the Presidency Trio of the Council of the European Union, in which we participate together with Romania and Finland," said the Speaker of Parliament and stressed that we should bear in mind the 12 million European farms and their importance for the European economy. "Further growth of the European economy and its competitiveness, together with employment growth, especially of youth and people from the rural areas, as well as all aspects of security, transport and energy connectivity and enlargement will be the priorities of the first Croatian Presidency of the Council in the first half of 2020," said the Speaker of the Croatian Parliament Gordan Jandroković.
He expressed the conviction that this conference would contribute to clarifying the open issues regarding the new European agricultural policy in the next financial period, and "respect the demands of most members to keep the EU Budget for agriculture at the same level as in the current period," concluded the Speaker of Parliament Jandrokovic at the opening of the Interparliamentary Conference "The Role of Parliaments in Shaping the Future of Food and Farming".