“We know that when people go abroad with us, they make a business. 53% of the participants in business missions conclude business. And then third message to you resilience. Think for a second about the money we spent, for example, in olive oil when we have crisis. If that money is spent into promotion. Think, for example, in wine, the money we spend on wine. We could spend this money in promotion instead of paying distillation crisis. So we believe that doing promotional policy we could have enough resilience. Which brings me to a final point. Policy coherence. We believe that when we do promotion policy, we are consistent with other policies. For example, fruit and vegetables. It's a good example on beating cancer. It's definitely when you're more invested in fruits and vegetables you reduce cancer. Since we have this program, we have financed 600 programs. Again, I think the success story of the European Union. So again, economic returns, trade opportunities and resilience. Thank you. And thank you especially for this Parliament for the support that you are giving us in terms of budgets. Honourable Nadella, on the relevance, which is the rapporteur for, for the for the budget and also for all the all the support you are giving us in terms of of budget. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.”
Export of EU agri-food products · Agricultural funding
“I will respond in Italian because there were so all about organic production. This is because we had fewer requests. We did everything that we could to grow that sector, but we didn't have enough demand. And so just in terms of competition, um, we thought that would, uh, reduce the budget. To give you some figures about the economic return, about policy. So we are exporting more than ever in in 2024. The trade surplus of the European Union was €64 billion. And please have that in mind for each billion euro. We create 12,000 jobs in the European Union. Each billion euro of exports creates 12,000 jobs in the European Union. And so we are making a good job in the promotion of European exports. Let me give you another figure for your consideration. According to the University of Geneva, for each euro we spent in trade policy, we generated a return of 172 of exports Approach €1 172 of exports on return, so it's really clear a good investment. The Americans they also have a project on promotion. And their calculation is that for each dollar they invest they get a return on $24. So this promotion program is working well. We can show the investment. By the way, I heard that it was the commission who cut the money. That's not correct. It was the European Council who decided to cut the money in the revision of the mid-term review. Second thing, trade opportunities. When there are free trade agreements, we provoke them into real business. What we do, promotion is part of the answer, as the people have just said. So when we have a free trade agreement, we go to the countries and we try to use with the promotion money and export.”
Export of EU agri-food products · Agricultural funding
“Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Before before making comments on the on the hearing today, I want to address some of the issues raised by Honourable Dortmund. Uh, Salvatore Di Maio and and and Adalah. Uh, this policy is quite consensual. And and if you heard there were five interventions, all of them were positive support of of of this policy. And I think one of the reasons of this success is because we have a stable framework for more than ten years. We have the same regulation since 2014. And it's a pity the that he's gone because he was the rapporteur 11 years ago. So this is stability. Has proved that this policy is working. Well, I wanted to make a comment on one of the things we have said that some member states got more money than others. Let me reassure all MEPs. We have this programme published in all the languages we travel to, all the countries. We make promotion everywhere, including in Romania, and we are happy to count with you MEPs to give more visibility to this promotion file. Also, I reply to honourable singer that if you have small GIS in Germany, we are more than happy to help you to make a promotion of those guys because people who have GIS have special budget for the promotion.”