I hope that we can all agree that the money that will be transferred into the rural development policy, specially earmarked for support in those areas where tobacco production is taking place or has taken place, will be very important.

Jobs are being lost, tens of thousands of small and medium-sized tobacco growers are being ruined, yet tobacco imports have risen to more than EUR 1.2 billion a year.

As from budget year 2011, an amount of EUR 484 million representing 50 percent of the three-year average total aid amount in the years 2000, 2001 and 2002 for the subsidised tobacco shall be available as additional Community support for measures in tobacco producing regions under rural development programming financed under the EAGGF "Guarantee" Section according to Regulation (EC) No 1257/1999, for those Member States in which the tobacco producers received aid in accordance with Regulation (EC) No 2075/92 during the years 2000,2001 ...[+++]and 2002.

From 2011, half the aid granted annually for tobacco between 2000 and 2002 (estimated at EUR 484 million) will be transferred for restructuring the tobacco-producing regions under rural development programmes financed under the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund, EAGGF.

Financial transfer for restructuring in the tobacco regions

Other consequences would be: the closure of hundreds of European companies involved in the primary processing industry and ancillary activities whose existence depends on local availability of the agricultural raw material, with a consequent massive decrease in the taxes paid by the companies and their employees and an even more severe deficit in terms of social security contributions; vast rural areas of the poorest regions of Europe would turn to desert, considering that 80% of European tobacco is grown in Objective 1 areas; there would be a general impoverishment of local systems where the production ...[+++] and processing of tobacco is highly concentrated, which in many cases forms the backbone on which a complex economic and social system is grounded and which currently provides the populations with dignified living conditions.