WRITTEN QUESTION E-0090/00 by Camilo Nogueira Román (Verts/ALE) to the Commission. Milk quotas in Galicia.
26. 1. 2001 EN Official Journal of the European Communities C 26 E/13 (2001/C 26 E/015) WRITTEN QUESTION E-0090/00 by Camilo Nogueira RomÆn (Verts/ALE) to the Commission (26 January 2000) Subject: Milk quotas in Galicia According to reports in the Galician press, a spokesman for and senior representative of the Commissioner responsible for Agriculture and Fisheries (namely, the recently appointed Director-General of Agriculture) has stated that Galicia is not going to be granted an increase in its milk quota and should just be grateful for its small share of the 550 000-tonne increase granted to Spain for this and subsequent years. This is in spite of the fact that he is well aware (as any senior Commission representative should be) that Galicia has a clearly inadequate milk quota and is therefore unable to modernise its agricultural sector without putting farms out of business which are potentially capable of reaching a productivity level similar to the European average, with the result that Galicia could achieve a production performance comparable with that of countries and regions such as Ireland and Brittany. What rural development strategy could be followed by a region such as Galicia which is denied the opportunity to increase its milk production, even though that would be the principal and the most obvious and effective way for it to pursue regional development, notwithstanding the other forms of diversification which it is practising? Answer given by Mr Fischler on behalf of the Commission (28 February 2000) The Regulation on rural development contains a series of measures to promote the adjustment and development of rural areas. However, it is not the Commission but rather the national or regional authorities responsible for drawing up the regionís development programme that propose the development strategy and the measures to implement that strategy in the medium term, taking account of the regionís particular socio-economic situation. The Commissionís role is to examine whether the analysis made and the measures proposed constitute an adequate response to the regionís restructuring and conversion needs. With regard to milk quotas, the Honourable Member is referred to the reply to his written question E-91/00 (1). (1) OJ C 330 E, 21. 11. 2000. (2001/C 26 E/016) WRITTEN QUESTION P-0130/00 by Jens-Peter Bonde (EDD) to the Commission (18 January 2000) Subject: Administration of OLAF Will the Commission ensure that officials do not make public pronouncements on guilt when a national prosecuting authority has decided to drop its inquiries into a case begun at the prompting of UCLAF/ OLAF? Will the Commission ensure that funding for approved projects may not be withheld simply because the Commission believes it has outstanding claims against other projects when no legal proceedings have begun to enforce its claim? These questions relate to the Commissionís behaviour in the case against the Nordvestjysk Folkecenter for Vedvarende Energií (North-West Jutland Renewable Energy Centre), which was publicly branded a fraud by a Commission official although the fraud squad in Denmark had concluded that there is no evidence for the accusations