Criteria adopted by the Commission in proposing a seat for the European Food Authority
8.3.2001
ORAL QUESTION O-0032/01
pursuant to Rule 42 of the Rules of Procedure
by Francesco Fiori, Generoso Andria, Rocco Buttiglione, Sergio Berlato, Guido Bodrato, Renato Brunetta, Luigi Cesaro, Luigi Cocilovo, Raffaele Costa, Marcello Dell'Utri, Luigi De Mita, Michl Ebner, Enrico Ferri, Giuseppe Gargani, Jas Gawronski, Vitaliano Gemelli, Giorgio Lisi, Raffaele Lombardo, Mario Mantovani, Mario Mauro, Francesco Musotto, Sebastiano Musumeci, Giuseppe Nisticò, Mauro Nobilia, Guido Podestà, Adriana Poli Bortone, Amalia Sartori, Umberto Scapagnini, Mariotto Segni, Francesco Turchi, Guido Viceconte and Stefano Zappalà
to the Commission
– The Council must determine the seat of the European Food Authority during the first half of 2001.
– In view of the European Food Authority’s specific functions, the important factors for choosing its location should be: geographical centrality, a solid tradition of agribusiness which includes both continental and more typically Mediterranean production, a strong industrial presence in the food processing sector, and scientific and academic research.
– The Commission has proposed Luxembourg as the authority’s seat, with a view to making optimum use of existing Community structures within the context of the reorganisation of its own departments.
– The new authority for food safety is, by nature, a body which is independent of the Commission’s departments and its administrative and hierarchical control, and this characteristic is also one of the reasons for its existence.
In view of the above:
- Can the Commission set out to Parliament the costs and benefits of choosing a location such as Luxembourg, which seems to meet overall efficiency criteria for the institutions, but which is not likely to be the best solution as far as the operation of the European Food Authority itself is concerned?
- Does the Commission not consider that locating the authority in Luxembourg, which is already the seat of numerous judicial and administrative Community bodies, may undermine its independent image and thus its credibility in consumers’ eyes, and therefore increase the complexity and costs of the information drive which the authority will have to undertake in the coming months?
- Can the Commission confirm that the various decentralised agencies have been extremely efficient in their own particular spheres of activity, and that the fact that they are geographically scattered never provoked criticism from the Commission or Member States, but on the contrary has been seen as a way of bringing the EU closer to citizens?
- Does the Commission intend its proposal to be definitive, or does it think it would be advisable to reconsider it in the light of a debate which would last for a limited period of time and would include the other Community bodies involved, especially the Parliament?
Tabled: 08.03.2001
Forwarded: 12.03.2001
Deadline for reply: 19.03.2001