Govt summons Puglia officials over Xylella

(ANSA) - Rome, July 22 - The government has summoned Puglia regional authorities to a meeting in the capital next week after the European Commission launched a fresh infringement procedure against Italy concerning an outbreak of the highly contagious Xylella disease affecting olive trees, ANSA sources said Friday.
    Immediate action to fight the deadly plant pathogen will be on the table, the sources said.
    Also on Thursday, Lecce Chief Prosecutor Cataldo Motta told ANSA he plans to apprise the European Commission of the fact that dealing with the disease without felling the trees appears to have restored olive groves from Brindisi to Lecce to health.
    "Some olive groves have recovered perfectly thanks to...pruning and cleaning the ground beneath the canopy, nothing more," Motta said.
    EU directives have called for felling the affected trees as well as surrounding healthy ones in a bid to contain the outbreak.
    The president of the Puglia branch of Coldiretti farmers association called the EU infringement procedure "unacceptable" and its directives "inapplicable". "The EU has grave responsibilities in the matter of Xyella, both as far as its introduction (into Europe from South America) and on the way it dealt with the emergency," Gianni Cantele said. The Union has failed to impose an embargo on the areas where the bacterium hails from - such as South America - and has "caused irreparable damage to Puglia's olive cultivation", he said.
    "Thanks to the EU's porous borders Xylella has become a European disease," Cantele said. "The EU cannot keep rapping Member States on the knuckles without providing adequate support measures against the disease".