Food Law News - EU - 2001


European Parliament Daily Notebook, 3 April 2001

EUROPEAN FOOD AUTHORITY - Budgetary guidelines 2002 - Food Safety and CAP reform a priority

Parliament voted 440 to 6 with 8 abstentions in favour of a resolution setting out priorities for next year's budget. Political considerations include food safety, foreign policy and EU aid programmes, implementing the Commission's administrative reforms and preparing for enlargement. MEPs also want to abolish the distinction between compulsory expenditure (essentially funding for the CAP) and non-compulsory expenditure and for the codecision procedure to apply to legislation on the CAP. Moreover, MEPs are concerned that extra funds required to pay for the consequences of the BSE crisis will lead to pressures on next year's budget.

Parliament is giving its backing to the new European Food Safety Authority and believes that the BSE crisis should prompt the EU and its Member States to go further in reforming the CAP, in the light of both the forthcoming round of WTO negotiations and the implications for agriculture of enlargement. Other points taken up in the resolution include paying for reforms to the Common Fisheries Policy, illegal immigration, aid to the Balkans, the Mediterranean Strategy and the budgetary implications of a Foreign and Defence Policy where MEPs take the view that insufficient attention has been paid to the budgetary aspects and are anxious to see an international approach to dismantling weapons of mass destruction.


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