Animal welfare tops agenda

Date: 21/12/1995

By Michael Mann

THE past year must rank as one of the busiest ever faced by an Agriculture Commissioner, but this has not daunted Franz Fischler, Austria's first-ever representative in the highest echelons of the Breydel.

The year began with floods and emotional demonstrations from animal welfare protesters, and ended with the whole future of the Common Agricultural Policy up for grabs.

Taking over the reins from his likeable but lacklustre predecessor René Steichen, Fischler proved one of the most impressive of the new Commissioners in the parliamentary hearing to vet his appointment.

From the first EU agriculture ministers meeting of the year, the focus was firmly on questions of animal welfare. Faced with passionate protests at home, the UK pressed for more humane animal transport rules and an end to the raising of calves in veal crates. The issue split member states along north-south lines, with some northern countries pressing for even tougher controls than those called for by the UK, while southern countries argued strongly in favour of maintaining the status quo.

It was not until a marathon meeting in June that ministers finally reached a deal on animal transport - and not before trade-offs were made with unrelated questions, including agrimonetary policy and farm prices.

The agreement on agrimonetary policy means the 'green conversion rates' for farm payments in the strong currency countries will be frozen until the start of 1999, with compensation payments made to farmers suffering income losses due to green rate revaluations.

In February, the agricultural world was shocked by the murder of senior Belgian vet Karel van Noppen, allegedly by the 'hormone Mafia'. In an attempt to add new vigour to the debate and stave off a legal threat from the US, Fischler called a scientific conference on hormone use. This found that 'naturally-occurring' hormones present no health risk, but it remains unlikely that the EU will reverse its current ban on all hormones.

Meanwhile, long and complex negotiations in the management committees over the first six months of the year finally brought agreement on how the EU was to implement its commitments under the Uruguay Round of the GATT, which came into force on 1 July.

But arrangements for cereals and rice led to threats of a World Trade Organisation panel from the US and Canada, although by the end of the year this had been averted thanks to a deal to compensate several major trading partners for tariff increases on their produce entering the three new member states. Transatlantic relations have not been helped, however, by a formal complaint from the US about the EU's restrictive banana import regime, unaltered after a year of fruitless negotiations on proposals for internal changes.

September saw the Commission finally adopt long-awaited proposals to reform the fruit and vegetable sector. In the same month, faced with very low stocks and high world market prices, ministers agreed to reduce set-aside to 10&percent; and to set a single rate for all types of set-aside. A month later, in Luxembourg, they agreed a plan to allow member states to compensate farmers for 'considerable' income losses due to currency movements in other member states.

The year ended with heads of government studying Fischler's White Paper on the future of the CAP, which admitted that reform will have to be continued to meet future challenges, not least the enlargement of the EU eastwards.

Meanwhile, Fischler's counterpart in fisheries, Emma Bonino, when preparing for her parliamentary hearing back in January, could hardly have expected a portfolio which only fell into her lap after the No vote in Norway to provide her with such a high profile so quickly.

An apparently minor conflict over the share-out of 27,000 tonnes of Greenland halibut blew up into a major diplomatic incident between the EU and Canada. Despite coming off second best in the public relations battle, the EU was eventually awarded the lion's share of the annual quota.

An early end to the EU/Morocco fisheries agreement in April marked the start of a long negotiation on a new deal, which was only tied up once and for all in November. In the light of recent fisheries conflicts, the decision by the United Nations in the autumn to improve controls over “straddling stocks and highly-migratory species” was seen as a major victory for fisheries preservation.