Portugal, Agriculture Minister Maria do Céu
Antunes talking about the future of farming in the EU ?!?
Read what is happening in Odemira ( and other
places ) below, in the second article.
OVOODOCORVO
Europe’s farm fail
A week of negotiations crashed and burned after EU
countries pulled back on plans to make farming greener.
BY EDDY WAX
AND GABRIELA GALINDO
May 28,
2021 6:33 pm
EU
governments showed their true colors on reforming the bloc's mammoth farm
policy this week — and that color's not green.
Four days
of negotiations billed as the prime moment to finalize a new Common
Agricultural Policy blew up on Friday in a skull-crunching head-to-head clash
between governments and members of the European Parliament over how much of the
€270 billion budget should be set aside for greener kinds of farming.
The CAP is
the single biggest tranche of the regular EU budget and campaigners have
pressed the European Commission's green supremo Frans Timmermans to ensure that
those payments secure a paradigm shift from business-as-usual industrial
farming to more environmentally friendly methods.
That switch
to greener farming looked a remote prospect after Friday's breakdown, with
talks now shunted into June. The failed negotiations revealed a chasm of
divergent views between governments, EU officials and MEPs on how to make
agriculture more climate-friendly, and left the bloc's 10 million farmers in
the dark about what's in store in the next five-year CAP, which has already
been delayed by two years.
"Some
member states have zero willing, but really zero, to change anything. They
wanted a reform that does not change anything at all," said European
People's Party lawmaker Herbert Dorfmann.
As talks
reached their climax on Thursday afternoon, MEPs were seething at a proposal
from EU countries that walked back the environmental ambition even further than
what countries had offered the previous day, and was light-years away from what
the European Parliament wanted.
The
proposal would have given countries a loophole to spend just 18 percent of
their main subsidies pot on the new "eco-scheme" programs, a flagship
element of the CAP meant to encourage more sustainable farming from
agro-forestry to organic agriculture. Countries argued the loophole was needed
in case farmers don't take up the green schemes, but Parliament rejects that
and has pushed for a higher 30 percent ring-fence.
MEPs flatly
rejected the offer from countries, as represented by the Council of the EU.
They regarded the offer as an attempt to bulldoze the Parliament, an
institution which is often considered the junior partner in EU negotiations.
Agriculture
ministers reacted furiously at a 2 a.m. roundtable. Greece's Spilios Livanos
accused MEPs of blackmailing democratically elected governments by daring to
turn down their proposal. "I sincerely don’t understand how the European
Parliament reacts to this dialogue and I find it totally disrespectful to all
of us," he told ministers and diplomats, to a round of applause.
Into the dark
Shortly
afterward, the Council turned off the cameras despite the session having been
advertised to journalists as a public session and ministers continued their
talks in what was described by an EU diplomat as "a very bad
atmosphere." Countries ultimately did not give Portugal, which holds the
rotating presidency of the Council, a fresh mandate to keep negotiating with
Parliament, torpedoing the talks early on Friday.
The
reluctant decision to postpone talks for another month represents a blow for
Portugal, whose Agriculture Minister Maria do Céu Antunes had stressed that the
end of May was the latest possible moment for tying up the CAP.
At a press
conference, she put a positive spin on the talks, saying: “We did say that we
would have liked to conclude this process in May but that doesn’t mean we are
giving up.” She said that Portugal still aims to wrap up the CAP reform before
the end of its presidency and insisted that "there are a whole host of points
on which we do agree."
But the
reality was that negotiating sides drifted further apart, rather than
converging, across the week.
Negotiations
broke off with Parliament still pushing the Council to be greener on a host of
other issues. These included linking the CAP strongly to the EU's broader Green
Deal plans, the basic land management conditions farmers will have to meet to
receive any EU subsidies, how much money to set aside for longer-term green
investments, and also which payments should be classed as climate-friendly.
Diplomats
from two EU countries said they felt Portuguese diplomats had made a grave
error by presenting the provocative proposal to the Parliament, as there was no
way it could have formed the basis for a reasonable compromise.
"In
Council last night it became really clear that it was impossible to get a new
proposal that would allow for a deal today. It was a clusterfuck," one of
the EU diplomats commented. They described the week of talks as "so
unprofessional from every side."
But on
Friday France was keen to project an image of unity among countries, stressing
that Portugal still had the full backing of the Council. Turning its guns on
MEPs, the French agriculture ministry signaled to journalists that all
ministers were united in opposing the Parliament’s proposals, deeming them
unworkable, and arguing that the Parliament showed little willingness to
listen.
MEPs from
across the political spectrum were united in criticizing the Council's attitude
toward them. The EPP's Norbert Lins told journalists: "I expect the
Council to respect us as co-legislators." This was echoed by Green
lawmaker Benoît Biteau, who said: “The Council has not understood that the
Parliament is a co-legislator, that it is not for the Council to impose their
vision of things, of the CAP, of European agriculture."
The bitter
post-mortem of the breakdown of talks was not limited to a spat between MEPs
and governments.
EU
Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski defended the role he and his
superior Timmermans played in the talks, having taken flak from powerful
agricultural ministers of Germany and Spain for so strongly supporting the
Parliament's greener push. "The role of the Commission is as a kind of
facilitator and mediator, but I don't think it can be a completely neutral
role."
Styling
himself as the champion of real farmers, he took a dig at pesky national
administrations, whom he blamed for whipping up fears that eco-schemes money
would go to waste.
The
skirmish leaves MEPs emboldened to push home their demands for a greener CAP
during the next set-piece negotiations in Luxembourg on June 28 and 29.
PM forced into ‘damage control’ intervention over
Covid ‘blackspot’ of Odemira
By Natasha
Donn -12th May 2021
Following a
manic week of news and revelations from the ‘Covid-blackspot’ of Odemira, prime
minister António Costa cancelled his agenda on Tuesday afternoon in order to
wrestle back control.
From now
on, the housing of immigrant agricultural workers employed by intensive salad
greens and berry explorations will have some structure to ensure adult men are
not packed cheek-by-jowl into unsanitary accommodation paying small fortunes
for the privilege as they eke out a living that can only be described as
‘modern-day slavery’.
Temporary
workers brought in for specific moments (harvesting, etc.) are to be offered
decent conditions of housing by their employing entities, while the living
conditions of permanent workers will be the responsibility of the municipality.
On the
basis that there are not enough homes to offer permanent workers, EU funding is
to be used to construct what is necessary.
This is
clearly a ‘long-term’ plan and doesn’t fully explain ‘what happens in the
meantime’. But it is a solid step in the right direction.
President
Marcelo waded into the developing crisis over a week ago, demanding reports
from his advisors on everything that was ‘wrong’ in Odemira.
He said on
Tuesday as António Costa was still on his way to what is the largest
municipality in the country, there will have to be ‘many political
consequences’ from this episode that began with ‘the alarm’ that cases of Covid
in the municipality were ‘running out of control’.
This has
been ‘dealt with’ now in that the cases were largely within the immigrant
population – by dint of their miserable living conditions (which have been an
open secret for the best part of a decade) – and these have been isolated and
are recovering without any reports of serious illness.
The
sanitary cordon that had barricaded citizens of two parishes from the outside
world for the last 12 days is now over, and a robust vaccination and testing
programme underway.
With
certainly one of the political consequences likely being the performance
through this drama of the ministry of interior administration Eduardo Cabrita
(notably absent in Mr Costa’s damage control intervention on Tuesday), others
have been highlighted by local politicians – particularly when it comes to the
total lack of ‘joined up thinking’ over territorial order.
Mayor José
Gonçalves in the neighbouring borough of Aljezur – which was also blighted by
an outbreak of Covid infections among immigrants employed on Odemira’s
explorations – explains that everything that is wrong stems from successive
governments having allowed “the practice of unrestrained, unregulated,
intensive agriculture” in an area that has been designated as a natural park
(the Parque Natural do Sudoeste Alentejano e Costa Vicentina, or ‘PNSACV’).
Irrespective
of the effects on the environment, on communities, the lack of control has
meant that nothing is being done with regards to addressing issues over water.
These explorations – many of them unlicensed – are ‘guzzling’ the area’s
precious supplies; every year issues with water become that more acute.
It’s time,
says the mayor for much more than the rehousing thousands of ‘pawns’ in this
insidious game. It’s time to define:
Says Mr
Gonçalves, “the challenge is enormous”. But it makes no sense that people
living legally within the natural park (that stretches from Vila do Bispo in
the south round Sagres and up to Sines) are not even allowed to undertake the
simplest of home-improvements, while companies can come in, cover huge tracts
of land with plastic-covered greenhouses, pollute the soil and groundwater with
chemicals, guzzle water and exploit Third World citizens living in unimaginable
poverty.
“It’s time
to face this situation with realism”, the mayor concluded in a statement, while
on television commentator Miguel Sousa Tavares praised the concerted efforts of
journalists throughout the country in ramming home Odemira’s problems, to the
point that they have finally started being addressed at the highest level of
government.
Leader
writer Eduardo Damâso, director of Sâbado magazine, warns that even this
however is not enough.
“What
Odemira needs cannot be resolved with mere episodes of political protagonism
even from the highest level”, he wrote on Wednesday. “It needs rigorous
decision-making and good planning, investment and respect from those in Lisbon
who think Portugal exists between the Palaces of São Bento (the prime
minister’s official residence) and Belém (the official residence of the
president).
Odemira has
‘no health care system to speak of, no roads, no quality employment’, says Mr
Damâso. It needs much more in the way of education and environmental
protection, or what is one of the most beautiful coastal areas of Europe that
is meant to be ‘protected’ will simply continue to be ravished.
Immigrants
pay up to €17,000 for ‘the privilege’ of working in Odemira explorations
This is
just one of the ‘shocks’ coming out of journalistic investigations into the
plight of immigrant workers employed in explorations in Odemira. Many of these workers
do not have contracts with their employers (only with employment agencies),
Miguel Sousa Tavares told TVI, and they have paid anything between €12,000 –
€17,000 for the privilege of securing their jobs, unaware that part of this
money goes to the companies employing them. “This is scandalous”, said Tavares.
The
‘scandals’ don’t appear to stop coming, but the more they come out, the more
local authorities that have for years been demanding solutions may at last
start seeing them.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário