Commission’s tariff plan comes under attack from anti-poverty groups

Date: 19/12/02

By David Cronin

BOTH the US and anti-poverty groups have voiced criticisms of this week's European Commission proposal to slash tariffs imposed on imports from poor countries and subsidies that rich nations pay to their farmers.

Published on Monday (16 December), the plan would commit the Union to reducing export subsidies by half, import tariffs by 36% and support for goods produced for domestic markets by 55% if such payments have a distorting effect on trade. But the plan's implementation would be conditional on other developed parts of the world taking similar steps. The reductions would be implemented over a six year period, starting in 2006.

Franz Fischler, the EU's agriculture commissioner, said the blueprint was in line with the agenda for boosting farm trade and stimulating development of poor countries agreed by ministers at the World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Doha last year.

"It is pragmatic but wide-ranging and ambitious," the Austrian contended. "We go for an approach that does not put the burden of [trade] liberalisation only on others, but leads to a fair burden-sharing among developed countries. All the developed countries have to move. Developing countries need not just rhetoric but real benefits."

While US trade spokesman Richard Mills promised the Bush administration will scrutinise the plan carefully, he added that it "does not embrace fundamental reform in agricultural trade". Mills called on the Commission to pursue its efforts to overhaul the Common Agricultural Policy in the New Year, so that it will be able to support larger cuts in tariffs and subsidies in the WTO-sponsored talks.

Aid agency Oxfam claims the EU's export subsidies destroy the livelihood of farmers in poor countries by flooding their national markets with cheap produce. "It is absurd that farmers in the world's poorest countries should have to wait until 2013 for the EU to halve export subsidies," said Justin Forsyth, Oxfam's policy director.

Under the plan, the EU would eliminate export subsidies for a range of products, including wheat, olive oil and tobacco, provided other WTO members do likewise.

Both the US and anti-poverty groups have voiced criticisms of a European Commission proposal, published on 16 December 2002, to slash tariffs imposed on imports from poor countries and subsidies that rich nations pay to their farmers.