February 16, 2016
We request Governmentand Parliament to LEAVE the INDEPENDENCE of the research, gene conservation andheritage preservation institutions, those which have great traditions, thosewhich are assisting the sustainable development and objective strategic planning.
Those private or legalperson who agree with this petition may sign HERE in English or ITT in Hungarian by March 15, 2016.
Kislépték, theNational Union for Representing the Interests of Small-scale Farmers is on theopinion that those institutions which are listed below have indispensable rolein the local economy and rural development measures, which actually alsosupported by Government. One of the main priorities of the European Union isthe climate preservation and supporting R&D which is evidenced by theEuropean Innovation Partnership for the agricultural productivity andsustainability. These institutions are providing help in these matters for thecivil and professional organisations.
Now Government plansto centralise these institutions and merge them under the large umbrella of theAgricultural Ministry.
It is a fear if theseinstitutions with great tradition which are fostering the above objectiveswould be centralised the successor bodies with their already overwhelmed staffwould not be able to take these additional tasks neither by professionally, norin time and capacity which then might go to the expense of professionalism.Ministries already work with a decreased budget, but the work load did notdecrease by the cut-back since the real basis of the bureaucracy, the number ofthe regulations did not decrease. Certainly in specific cases the number of therules and the inspections should not be decreased, such as in food safetyscandals.
We believe,institutions may perform a substantial professional work if they have theirindependence, fast decision making mechanism and the necessary professionalstaff.
The research work ofthe Research Institute of Agricultural Economics are well representing theconnecting tasks of the Institute between theory and practice. The researchesthey made in the past three years could be well used by us as well as otherorganisations dealing with rural development, such as studies on farmersmarket, on small-scale farming, trade-marks.
The Center for PlantDiversity , the Research Centre for Farm AnimalGene Conservation, National Agricultural Research and Innovation Centre together with the merged fruit, grape and gardening institutions, assist localcommunities to preserves traditional varieties and spreading newly andstrengthening the traditional folk knowledge with great results since genediversification has a high priority in addition to food hygiene, beside theirbasic activity, i.e. gene preservation and research.
The Hungarian HeritageHouse provides such treasures and professionals to our Culture to which we maywell be proud. It is an open space for community activities but also serves asa professional basis with the outmost outstanding professionals where it is amaim to preserve and publicize the traditional Hungarian Culture. Besidepreserving and transferring the values of the Culture they successfully madeinnovative programmes, which build our image and basis our feat in tourism.These activities cannot be carried on with proper professionalism, capacity andeffective decision making mechanism if the planned merge would be executed.
We had several hardbut effective discussions with the National Food Chain Safety Office. It is the result of their accurate professionalwork that the on-site misunderstandings are treated fast. There were severalprogrammes for helping small-scale farmers and consumers, such as The Year ofLocal Product, or the controlling public catering or many food tests.Professional independence ensures the neutral examination and qualification ofthe farmers. We would like to highlight their altruistic assistance in thefinalisation of the Good Hygiene Practice of Agro Tourism and Small-ScaleFarmers which is enviously listened by other Members States on internationalforums.
