MT
Ladies and Gentlemen. As you know we had a remit from Stuttgart to engage upon fundamental issues connected with the relaunching of the Community. We really had four fundamental tasks to do.
One was to devise a system which would deal effectively with agricultural surpluses. Er, we're not successful in that. Indeed, the subject was really not fundamentally tackled. You will know from the arguments that went on that instead of devising a system to deal with surpluses what happened, for example, in the case of milk was that people set out to find increasing taxes in order to finance increasing surpluses. The Commission had proposed a more restricted target on milk, er, which we were prepared to go along with. In the end many people wished for their own countries to opt out of that target and wished to have special arrangements for their own countries, as a result of which the target went up considerably. There would not have been money to finance it, even though they put in extra taxes such as an increase of co-responsibility levy, which would have hit our farmers very badly indeed, and also an extra tax on, or tax on oil and fats from overseas, which would have hit other countries badly, in particular Third World, and of course some countries could have had retaliatory measures against us. Now I make that illustration. Many, many countries were in favour of what the Commission was trying to propose, others opted out and the compromise resulted not in tackling the problem of fundamental surpluses but actually in finding ways of financing increasing surpluses through the method of increasing taxation.
So you see we actually ran away from the problem. We ourselves didn't, as you know we were fighting it the whole way. The compromise would have run away from the problem and was totally unacceptable to us and to a number of other countries, indeed I think most of them, er had complaints about particular matters of the milk regime proposed.
So that was one task which we did not succeed in fulfilling. The next one was to have a disciplined approach to financing the Community and to be able to set out a strict financial guideline of the kind that we have to do in our own budgets at home. For that purpose the French just one week ago had tabled a very excellent suggestion for a strict financial guideline setting out the total amount at the beginning of negotiations, and within that, er, that there would have to be a separate amount for the agricultural guideline. We were supporting that and amending it but we were not able in fact to get a strict financial guideline. Indeed again the whole tendency was to say, well, on the part, not on the part of all, the tendency on the part of some countries, I stress a minority, was to say that, er, we must decide what we want to spend and then the revenue must be raised to deal with expenditure. That was totally unacceptable to us and also to countries such as Germany, Holland and indeed to a number of others. So [end p1] the strict financial guideline was not fundamentally tackled as it would have had to have been in a relaunch of the Community, not only properly to finance agriculture but to be able to finance some of the other things which all of us are most anxious to do together as a Community, particularly on the electronics side, electronic research.
Now the third thing is if there … an increase in the resources to finance the Community was to be considered then the burden of that financing must be much more fairly shared among Community members. It's no good looking at it in future, em, as just having refunds to those who under the old system or the present system contribute rather a lot. We had to look, if you were going to have increasing own resources, at a fundamental, fair sharing of the burden, and that had to be an integral part of the increase in own resources. There was a quite good presidency text on this which needed amending a little because it did not properly measure the gap that, that we have between what we put into the Community and what we get out. It was quite a good basic text. I'm afraid other people found fundamental fault with it and wanted to go back to have a sort of patched up compromise which we've had to have in the past but which would not do for the future. So those were three things that we were not able to tackle fundamentally.
Er, fourthly, er, we wanted obviously to make a statement on enlargement for political reasons, it, it's important that we encourage Spain and Portugal to come into the Community and it really seems as if they ought not to have to wait, their negotiations ought not to have to wait while we sort out our internal problems.
And finally, the things we wish to do and to tackle in a fundamental way should be achieved without doing harm to other countries outside the Community. As you know, there are great problems not only between Community and United States, but also, er, with third countries who would have suffered very badly if some agricultural products could not come in to the Community or if there were taxes placed upon them. Now of course we did set ourselves a Herculean task and perhaps it's not surprising that we've had to have this meeting, er, at which we have not reached agreement, as a prelude to one that I hope will eventually reach agreement.
I must make our own position clear. We were prepared to tackle the fundamental issues in a long-term way. Er, we believe in the relaunching of the Community but we believe that's only going to be done by facing the fundamental issues and facing them realistically. We were not prepared, nor were a number of other delegations, to have a patched-up compromise which carries on in the old way and merely made expenditure rise and then said, revenue must rise to meet it. So, it, er, we have not achieved what we set to achieve, but we've not given up our fundamental objective. We've rejected what I call a horse-trading deal and we're going on to try to get the full relaunch properly tackling the fundamental problems.