UKIP Eastern Counties
Taming the Beast
Tuesday, 9th March 2010
Stuart Agnew MEP
"It has been a fascinating three months of battling the beast in Brussels. I've made my debut speech in the European Parliament and made several more since," says UKIP MEP Stuart Agnew.
"I have also been keen to highlight a crisis that is coming in the nation's egg production sector, when the EU introduces a ban on battery cages on 1st January 2012."
"Whilst the European Commission has refused to allow financial assistance to be given to our own producers to change away from cages, the situation is quite different elsewhere in the EU."
"The Commission has allowed many new member states to give a 25% grant towards this cost, which the EU then doubles up with another 25%. The UK, as a net contributor to the EU, will find its taxpayers funding a disproportionate share of this largesse. To make matters worse, the EU is allowing these new member states to continue to keep birds in cages after the ban and to export the eggs to other EU countries, as long as they are in the processed form."
"As things stand, ... production will be replaced by battery produced eggs form outside the EU."
"As ever, EU solutions are much worse that the original problem," concludes Mr Agnew.
"I have submitted two written questions to the European Commission," continues Mr Agnew. "The first is about the plight of Romanian children in orphanages and people with mental illness who are kept in the most appalling living conditions. Romania was supposed to have resolved this issue prior to joining the EU but the BBC has exposed the fact that it is still a major problem. Several constituents emailed me about this and I wrote to ask the Commission what steps it is taking to tackle the situation given that it has been pouring taxpayers' money into that country to the tune of 100 million euros since 1990 (£86.9m). I pointed out the Commission's moral obligation. No reply as yet!"
