(d) the signing of an agreement within the trade concluded with sugar beet and chicory growers concerning the share of restructuring aid for growers;

(db) the signing of an agreement within the trade concluded with sugar beet and chicory growers or their official representatives and concerning the share of restructuring aid to be allocated to growers, and

If synergies between planters and refiners, as expressed in professional agreements, justify the idea that planters should bear part of the production charge, it follows that the cost-sharing should be negotiated and should be the subject of an agreement between the two parties.

supports the request of the least developed countries to negotiate import quotas for sugar with the Union; reiterates that any changes to prices should be spread over time and should comply strictly with international commitments; recommends that the current intervention mechanism be maintained; requests that partial compensation to growers for income lost as a result of beet price cuts be increased, insofar as possible, and allocated in full; welcomes the Commission proposal on a restructuring programme, but calls for growers to have a right to codecision and for aid to be granted to growers affected by factory closures to help the ...[+++]m to restructure their farms; reiterates its view that the European Structural Funds and the European Social Fund should be mobilised in order to give workers affected by the restructuring of the European sugar industry the best opportunities to develop new career paths, as well as the necessary compensation; considers that the sugar sector must, as a matter of urgency, be included in the energy debate (a biofuels policy) as a means of helping to offset the reform's more harmful consequences; calls on the Council to monitor the situation in regions which are facing difficulties or which offer few profitable alternatives within farming.

11. Expresses particular regret at the failure in Cancun to agree on abolition of the trade-distorting subsidies for cotton, particularly the $3.5 billion subsidies paid to US cotton producers, which threaten the livelihoods of 10 million African cotton farmers; welcomes the EU’s willingness to take on board the cotton initiative of Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad and Benin and to eliminate the most trade-distorting support, and calls on the Commission, in close cooperation with the ACP and other developing countries, to table proposals for an early agreement on a fair deal for cotton producers, as well as to press the USA to respond positivel ...[+++]y with an early reform of its cotton sector;

In the context of the first review, it will in particular be necessary to examine alternatives to the present system which take more into account a high level of human health protection, and thus establish a link between the specific tax component and the relative harmfulness of the product; the gradual elimination of Community subsidies for tobacco growing (by 2010) as a logic consequence of high taxation of tobacco products for health reasons; the establishment of conversion programmes towards alternative economic activities for tobacco growers, in view of the possible negative employment effects of a higher taxation of tobacco produ ...[+++]cts and of the elimination of Community subsidies for tobacco growing.