mr president honourable members thank you for your questions on the future of the potato starch sector
the commission welcomes the opportunity to give its view on this sector
the reform of the potato starch sector was part of the health check and it was at the request of the sector that the council decided that the decoupling of all aids should coincide with the end of the quota system
in fact the commission had proposed a more gradual approach phasing in the decoupling in two steps
the sector's main argument had been that the additional delay before the aids were decoupled would allow potato starch producers to prepare for a market without quotas and without transformation aids
the request for a restructuring fund like the one in the sugar industry is difficult to accommodate within the budget allocated to the potato starch sector
even if all current beneficiaries including the growers of starch potatoes agreed to renounce their coupled aids to set up a restructuring fund to finance the dismantling of potato starch factories the available budget would be unlikely to provide a strong enough incentive
to set up a restructuring fund within the current legal framework requires a regulation which would enter into force on one july twenty eleven at the very earliest leaving a restructuring period of only one year with a very limited budget that would be insufficient to address an overcapacity which according to sector representatives could amount to up to forty of the total production capacity
as i mentioned earlier going back on the decisions taken as part of the health check is not an option
we are currently discussing the future of the cap after twenty thirteen
for the agricultural sector as a whole we want to have a cap that is strong efficient and well-balanced
the potato starch sector just like all other sectors can participate in this debate
