Verbatim report of proceedings

Monday, 23 October 2017 - Strasbourg

CE marked fertilising products (debate)

  Dariusz Rosati (PPE). – Mr President, we all agree that cadmium content has to be limited – this is not the question we are talking about. The debate here is about the speed and the question of by how much we should reduce it. Seen from this perspective, I find the proposal put forward by the Commission and then changed by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety unacceptable, simply because it goes too far, is far too restrictive and is potentially harmful for EU industrial agriculture.

This is for three reasons. The first has already been mentioned: that there is no scientific evidence that would link the level of cadmium in fertiliser with the level of cadmium in food and crops. There is no solid scientific evidence that the limit of 80 mg or 100 mg leads to the accumulation of cadmium and not to the de—accumulation of cadmium. So we should be careful about making such statements.

The second argument is that the majority of fertiliser plants in Europe import their phosphate rocks from third countries. There is some cadmium content in these raw materials, but a feasible operational decadmiation technology does not exist and this technology cannot simply be developed overnight. So what is the alternative? The alternative would probably be either to go out of business or simply to look for some other sources of supply, but the single readily available source of supply is the Russian Federation.

That brings me to the third argument. The third argument is that for phosphate rock, which has been considered by the Commission as a strategic raw material, we do not want to rely on supplies from an unreliable partner. So, if you want to reduce cadmium content and at the same time not destroy our industry, we should think about extending the period of adjustment in order to give our industry time to develop technologies that would fulfil these noble goals as indicated in the Commission proposal.

(Applause)