"We need an integrated approach of agricultural policy at international level"
Launching the first meeting of a new Advisory group on international aspects of agricultural policy, today (12 March) in Brussels, Dacian Cioloş, European Commissioner in charge of Agriculture and Rural Developpment stated : "Agriculture is discussed from a lot of different angles and its international component is getting more and more important. Our approach cannot be efficient on trade, developpement and sustainability if we are not coherent and transparent. We need an integrated approach".
Dacian Cioloş underlined that the EU wants to strenghen its collaboration with the FAO, saying: "The EU will not be strong within international forums if we are not coordonnated. If we want our voice to be heard at international level we have to be coordonated at EU level. It is also important to help farmers in the South to get organised, helping them in building simple agricultural policies, investing, promoting research and innovation for a sustainable agriculture and ensuring that the value added stays at local level".
The Commissioner for Agriculture added: "It is important to ensure that our trade agreements do not affect the developpement of local agricultures and we need to promote our standards in international negociations".
Dacian Cioloş confirmed that the EU will not abolish export refunds in an unilateral way without any corresponding move from our partners, explaining that "the EU have put a clear commitment on the table in the framework of WTO negociations and we need to see this matched by parallel move from other developped countries".
About Rio+20 discussions, the Commissioner said: "I'm working closely with Commissioner Potočnik to ensure that the EU is present in the Rio+20 negociations on the questions of developpement, environnement and food production. We need to take into account the perspectives both from the North and from the South".
