WEDNESDAY 5 DECEMBER 2007

Mr Yves Madre

  Q495  Chairman: Thank you very much for coming and meeting with us and finding time. If I can just briefly explain who we are and what we are doing. We are a Sub-Committee of the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union. Our present inquiry is into the CAP Health Check but also looking slightly beyond that and seeing how, if you like, the architecture and geography of the CAP may evolve into the future. That is really an invitation for you to talk about the French Presidency! We will have a record because it is a formal evidence session and you will have the transcript once it is ready and you can make revisions and changes to that. The best way of proceeding is through a discussion around the questions that we have indicated. If I could start it would be to say that your government has indicated that it wants to use its Presidency to open a debate about the purpose and future of CAP. How that has influenced your attitude to the Health Check? Where do you see the Health Check leading? Looking back a bit, what has been your experience of implementing the 2003 reforms? What changes has that led to in French agriculture and how do you see the change going forward? In ten seconds!

  Mr Madre: I will try. First, I have to apologise for my very poor English.

  Q496  Chairman: That is not the case.

  Mr Madre: It is a true pleasure to be here today because it reminds me of some years ago when I was in London. In relation to the CAP, the future of the CAP and the Health Check, I hope that things are quite clear. We think that President Sarkozy's speech, which he gave in Rennes in September, tried to be clear on the matter. We have two different topics. One is the Health Check and we have to consider what the Commission intends to do with that Health Check. It is a way to be sure that the CAP reform of 2003 will be efficient until 2013. There is another debate, and we would like to launch this debate during our Presidency, about the future of the CAP after 2013. It is not a secret that this debate will be the theme of the Informal Council in September 2008 in the Alps. The aim is not to conclude in September unless all the Member States agree with the French point of view!

  Q497  Chairman: How surprising!

  Mr Madre: The aim is to launch the debate, and the debate will continue, as the European Union to define the policy before defining the budget. We think that is a good rule, to say that you have to define the policy before speaking about the money. It is not that money is evil or bad but it is what we do in our own Member States and it should be the same in the European Union. Those are two different exercises. The Commission and the Commissioner say that the Health Check could be a step in order to prepare the future, and why not, but it means we all need to have clear ideas about the broad line of the future. It is not Mariann Fischer Boel's aim or the French Presidency at the time or the French Government today to have a reform during the Health Check. The Health Check is not a mid-term review of the words or the meanings.

  Q498  Chairman: In that debate about the future of the CAP that you are talking about, and okay you are not going to start in September and finish in September, what do you think will be the main elements of that debate?

  Mr Madre: I would be very glad to be able to tell you everything. In September 2007, just a few weeks ago, Mr Barnier launched in France what is called "Assises D'Agriculture" and we will have a lot of meetings with stakeholders, unions and other stakeholders from September to March 2008. The objective we gave to all the directors of all the groups who met, and will meet again, is first to define what they are looking for from the Health Check and what according to all the stakeholders would be a good CAP for the future after 2013. Moreover, we will have a conference during the first semester of 2008 considering the theme of research theory on agriculture. This conference will deal with not only the next CAP but longer term on what research could give to agriculture and to the European Agricultural Policy. We think that tomorrow we will need a CAP but that CAP will not be necessarily the same as the one that we have today. Objectives have to be defined first. In the work we are doing in France we will not define the CAP of the future without stakeholders or the French view of the CAP for the future without the French stakeholders so until March 2008 we will not be very talkative.

  Q499  Chairman: You will not be very talkative?

  Mr Madre: No. Nevertheless, we think that the CAP in the future should reach some aims and one is food security for Europe and something that may look strange to the United Kingdom which is food independence.