Economic and General Affairs Committee

Chair: Jos van CAMPEN (NL)

Vice-Chair: Eric Lainé (FR)

At its General Assembly in 2010 CIBE made the decision to merge its Common Market Countries Committee and Co-operatives Committee to better reflect the current situation for European Beet Growers.

The Common Market Countries Committee had been set up when the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957 to deal with issues specific to the Common Market in sugar. It was then involved in drawing up the Sugar Regulation (1967) and continued to defend beet growers' interests on problems arising from policy developments in the EU in the field of sugar, sugar products, and co-products. The new Economic and General Affairs Committee (EGAC) will continue this work and adopt positions, in particular with regards to:

• the management of the EU Common Market Organisation for Sugar and the monitoring of its regulations;
• the monitoring of the regulatory framework for biomass and biofuels;
• the monitoring of trade policies;
• the preparation for the new EU CAP after 2013.

It will also continue to assess statistics and annual surveys on beet harvests and inter-professional agreements and analyse world and European markets.

Delegates from this Committee meet whenever it is considered necessary - on average 4 times a year.