Künast: US farm boost will lead to gulf with EU

Date: 30/05/02

By David Cronin

WASHINGTON'S plans to massively increase farm spending will accentuate the differences between EU and US policies, according to German Agriculture Minister Renate Künast.

The Green politician accused the Bush administration of not following the EU's example of reassessing its farm subsidies regime.

'We are preparing for the future,' she told a Brussels audience this week. 'The United States is going in the opposite direction.'

Künast said the new US Farm Bill, under which the country's agricultural sector would get an extra €5.3 billion per year, will damage small producers in the world's poorest countries.

American support for its cotton growers would hurt the cotton industry in the developing world, she added.

But she predicted that one positive aspect of the bill is that it could increase solidarity between the Union and less developed countries.

Franz Fischler, the EU farm commissioner, recently argued that the bill would flout rules set by the World Trade Organisation on the permissible level of 'production distorting' subsidies.

Künast, the first woman to run Germany's agriculture ministry, also said she would oppose any effort to increase direct payments to EU farmers.

She favours forcing member states to phase out direct subsidies to farmers and invest instead in rural development and environment protection schemes.

This so-called 'modulation' would boost countryside tourism and encourage the construction of biomass plants, which use manure from livestock to generate energy.

'Farming is the most beautiful way to protect the environment,' she added, complaining that just 10 of the EU's farm budget currently goes to rural development and ecological measures.

To date, France, Britain and Portugal are alone among the 15 member states to agree on the voluntary introduction of 'modulation', although Hervé Gaymard, the new French farm minister, has decided to scrap it.

Künast said she did not believe he was against the idea entirely but that he was unhappy it had not been sufficiently supported by larger farmers.

'He knows reforms [of the Common Agricultural Policy, or CAP] have to be driven by a Franco-German friendship,' she commented - speaking a few hours before her first official meeting with Gaymard.

The discussions on the future of EU farm spending at December's Copenhagen summit are likely to produce 'long nights and long knives', she added, but an agreement on CAP reform is needed before the Union expands eastwards. '[EU leaders] will have to put a cap on the CAP and force agriculture ministers to do reforms under this.

'Sometimes a bit of pressure from outside helps the rest to move.'

Washington's plans to massively increase farm spending will accentuate the differences between EU and US policies, according to German Agriculture Minister Renate Künast.