Brown targets subsidy ‘hypocrisy’

Chancellor Gordon Brown accused European countries of hypocrisy for not reforming the Common Agricultural Policy - but at the same time promising increases in aid to Africa. His comments - in a speech, 29 June 2005 - came a week before the G8 leaders met in Gleneagles to discuss the challenges of poverty and climate change. Giving the annual UNICEF lecture he said 'So we cannot any longer ignore what people in the poorest countries will see as our hypocrisy of developed country protectionism. We should be opening our markets and removing trade-distorting subsidies and in particular, doing more to urgently tackle the waste of the common agricultural policy by now setting a date for the end of export subsidies'

• Primary Source

United Kingdom: HM Treasury: Speech, 29.6.05: From debt relief to empowerment http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/newsroom_and_speeches/press/2005/press_60_05.cfm

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