Dear CEMA colleagues and friends,
I’d like to warmly thank all of you who attended our common summit with CECE in Brussels, last October 14th-16th. This venue was a real momentum for our industry. All key-players showed commitment and interest. We had great presentations both on economic and technical matters.
These exchanges have shown that we all share same concerns and that our positions, on EU issues, are strongly aligned. Among those topics discussed, I would briefly quote the need for: i) legal certainty, ii) better environmental and safety regulations - tailored to our very specific products and economic situation, iii) international standardization - required by a global market and competition. These crucial issues are a further invitation to all of us to voice our concerns and expectations through CEMA. Obviously, the economic regulatory music is more and more composed in Brussels. So if we all pull on the same string, we’ll get a better chance that our industry will get better recognition by the EU policy-makers.
In this view, some communication and political work still needs to be performed. Recent regulations drafted by the European Commission, related to homologation and on-board diagnosis, show that our industry is still assimilated to the automotive sector. However, different products belonging to different markets should not be ruled the same way. As trivial as it looks, we still have to advocate that a tractor is not a road-vehicle. Or, that a sprayer is not a particularly dangerous machine because it can also spray pesticides. In this respect, we should underline CEMA’s success related to the Machinery Directive’s amendment on spraying equipment, adopted by the European Parliament on April 22nd, 2009. Thanks to CEMA’s advocacy plan, the European Parliament agreed that sprayers are not dangerous equipment, which saved us unnecessary administrative burdens and costs.
As a matter of fact, our agricultural equipment industry has much more in common with the construction equipment industry. In this view, a closer cooperation between our two associations is desirable. It can only give our two associations more leverage on regulatory matters, whether on emissions, physical agents, noise, marking or homologation. Therefore, we’ll internally explore soon how this collaboration could be fostered. The same is of course true at a global level. The international political dynamics on climate change, intellectual property rights, corporate responsibility, is a clear incentive to establish a reinforced cross-regional dialog with partner-organizations, like AEM.
I would also add that the very nature of CEMA is to be an association of associations. Therefore, CEMA’s future accomplishments depend very much on how the national associations will be connected to the collective effort to make our industry’s contribution to employment, technological development and agriculture better appreciated by the EU policy-makers.
To conclude this letter, let me once again express my profound gratitude to all of those who elected me as President of CEMA.
A great challenge and a wonderful mission.
Gilles Dryancour
