§ Mrs. Margaret EwingTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will list in theOfficial Report the current level of progress on set-aside schemes in each member state of the European Community, showing such progress as percentage of levels currently attained. in the United Kingdom.
§ Mr. RyderThe United Kingdom was the first member state to implement the set-aside scheme, and others remain at various stages of implementation. No figures are yet available for Luxembourg and Denmark, who are still in the process of introducing schemes, and for Greece and Italy, who are still receiving applications for their schemes. The schemes in most other member states are also still open for applications, and the figures for uptake are therefore provisional. Portugal does not yet have to apply a scheme.
The information available to date on uptake in other member states compared with set-aside in the United Kingdom of about 58,000 hectares is as follows:
Hectares set-aside Percentage of United Kingdom hectares set- aside Belgium 383 0.7 France 2,409 4.2 Ireland 1,918 3.3 Netherlands 1,222 2.1 Spain 6,202 10.8 Germany 170,635 296.2