Sweeping plans to revamp and reduce Europe’s controversial £30bn common agricultural policy subsidies were unveiled yesterday in a move certain to spark French opposition.
Franz Fischler, the commissioner for agriculture, said the plan, which breaks the much-criticised link between subsidies and farm production, and reduces some minimum guaranteed prices, would make European farming greener and more competitive.
It is also intended to help the EU negotiate the new global trade liberalisation round in the World Trade Organisation (WTO). But the blueprint came under fire from critics who said it did not go far enough.
”We want to make the farming industry not only competitive and in harmony with the environment and animal welfare, but also socially relevant,” Fischler said.
Under the plan, future EU cash support will be linked to high food quality standards and environmental farming methods through a system of direct aid. But months of tough negotiating lie ahead between deeply divided governments.
France leads the anti-reform camp, which includes Spain and Ireland, while Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany are demanding more change. Their strongest argument is that reforms must get under way as the EU takes in 10 new members, including Poland, with its millions of poor farmers, in May 2004.
Hopes for more radical moves were dashed last October when France persuaded Germany to agree a deal freezing farm spending, with a small inflationary leeway, from 2007 to 2013.
The CAP already consumes half the EU’s â,¬95-billion annual budget, and the system is badly out of balance, with 70% of funds going to only 20% of Europe’s largest farms.
Crucially, the latest proposals sustain the original plan of last summer to break the link between output and subsidy. It is this link which is blamed for the EU’s notorious wine lakes and butter mountains as farmers churned out extra produce to win generous payments from Brussels.
Cuts will also be made to the fixed prices that the EU guarantees for products such as cereals, milk and rice.
But other proposals were watered down and critics said the package had been weakened in the face of opposition from governments. For example, there is a 13% drop in funds for rural development, and a planned ceiling of â,¬300 000 per farm was also dropped.
”Yet again, member state differences have undermined efforts to reform the CAP,” complained Kevin Watkins, a spokesman for Oxfam. ”The current proposals will do nothing to end the EU dumping on poor countries.
”The danger is that this proposal will enable the EU to comply with the letter of WTO law, while violating the spirit of fair trade.”
Fischler insisted that reform was urgent given the union’s commitments to reduce trade-distorting subsidies.
But Allen Johnson, the chief US agriculture negotiator in the WTO, dismissed the changes as not radical enough. ”The cuts in domestic support leave in place the great disparities that have existed,” he said. ”We don’t accept that that is as far as Europe can go.”
Margaret Beckett, the secretary of state for rural affairs, welcomed the package, but there were objections from Conservatives. ”If these proposals are accepted, it would be a devastating financial blow to Britain’s farmers, heaping more misery on a suicidal community,” said Neil Parish, the Tory agriculture representative in the European parliament. – Guardian Unlimited Â