Voormalig EU-commissaris Fischler nieuwe adviseur van Tsjechische Landbouwminister (en)
On Friday, ex-Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Franz Fischler i met Minister Gandalovic and the Presidency team of the Ministry of Agriculture to discuss the Presidency priorities, aims and strategies in Agriculture.
According to Fischler, the most significant impact of the current economic crisis on agriculture is the difficulty to foresee the development of prices and, obviously, more intense competition. ‘Generally speaking, where there is less money among people, there is clearly more competition among them for who gets which share’, commented Fischler.
Franz Fischler became European Commissioner after McSharry, who was the first to introduce real reforms in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the then EU-12. At that time, reform was needed because of overproduction due to subsidies and regulated prices, and the subsequent excessive increase of the costs of the CAP. Central to McSharry’s reform was the idea of bringing agricultural production back into the market system, to decouple payments from production, to reduce the regulated prices and to reach the price level on the global market. Those who today discuss the rules for the CAP after 2013 are faced with similar tasks. Fischler took up the underlying ideas of the McSharry reform and, step by step, carried out a fundamental reform of the CAP. A new system of programmes for rural development was devised to ensure the success of the accession of Sweden, Finland and Austria. It was Fischler who initiated the ‘Cork Conference’ in 1996. Its final declaration became the groundwork for Pillar 2 of the CAP. Fischler also put emphasis on the shift from quantity to quality in the process of production of foodstuffs, which is of fundamental importance for the Czech Presidency’s agriculture priorities.
During his term of office, Franz Fischler dealt with several crises caused by animal diseases (the BSE crisis, foot-and-mouth-disease) and through his food safety policy managed to restore customer confidence in European production. ’As a European Commissioner, Franz Fischler sought to simplify the Common Agricultural policy mainly through transparent and accessible legislation - and simplification is one of the priorities of the Czech Presidency in the agricultural sector’, said Czech Minister of Agriculture Petr Gandalovic.
The term of office of Franz Fischler in the European Commission is exceptional in many respects - the reforms that have been achieved, Fischler’s influence on the successful negotiations on market liberalisation, and also the unprecedented accession of 10 new Member States, which was demanding in terms of negotiations on accession conditions in the field of Agriculture. Today, Fischler works as a consultant and he has taken an active part in the debate on the ’Global Marshall Plan’. Together with European Landowners, he has established the ’Forum for the Future of Agriculture’ and he chairs the discussion on the CAP after 2013 (the first Forum for the Future of Agriculture was held in March 2008 and a second one is to take place in March 2009).
contact: Tereza M. Dvorácková
tel.: +420 221 813 063, GSM: +420 737 213 030; e-mail: tereza.dvorackova@mze.cz