Fischer Boel wants to go further on sugar reforms

By David Cronin

Date: 04/05/05

Reform of the EU's sugar regime should be more ambitious than has been recommended so far, the European Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel will say next week.

The implications of the 28 April ruling by a World Trade Organization (WTO) panel that the EU is illegally pushing subsidised sugar onto the world market is expected to feature prominently in a Luxembourg meeting of the Union's farm ministers (9-10 May).

Last year Franz Fischler, then agriculture commissioner, advocated a one-third cut in the guaranteed price which the Union offers to its sugar growers. But Fischer Boel is to tell the ministers that she wishes to go further than her predecessor.

She is to push for more stringent reductions in prices and in the quotas set for sugar production, according to her aides. She also wants to remove a provision in the Fischler blueprint that the reforms be reviewed after a few years. The commissioner believes that a review clause could be used as a pretext to delay a long-lasting overhaul.

The Commission is scheduled to approve a revised proposal on sugar reform on 22 June. But this could have a rocky ride through the Council of Ministers. Ten EU countries, including Ireland, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Spain have called for a smaller price cut than that sought by Fischler.

Countries outside the Union which rely heavily on sugar are at odds over how the EU sugar regime should be handled. Brazil and Australia, which brought the WTO case, argue that the current system inflates world levels.

Yet many states in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) bloc have had their sugar industries propped up by being able to sell into the EU's market at an artificial price. They are pushing for a less drastic cut of 20%, phased in over a decade, rather than the three years proposed by Fischler.

But a source close to Fischer Boel said: "We will have to have a bigger price cut than what they want. We cannot continue with a situation where prices are so much above the world price level."

An action plan is to be drawn up to help each of the affected ACP countries adjust to the new system, the source added.

Oxfam, the anti-poverty group, is calling on the Commission to heed the ACP bloc's concerns. But it is also adamant that the EU must cut its sugar production, blaming current practices for dumping subsidised sugar on poor countries.

"The EU's strategy has been to delay reform," said Oxfam spokesman Louis Belanger. "But that is delaying the inevitable. We want the EU to implement the WTO ruling immediately."

Preview of a meeting of the EU's Agriculture Council on 9-10 May 2005 where the European Agriculture Commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel, was expected to propose a more ambitious reform of the EU's sugar regime than had been recommended by her predecessor. The implications of a ruling on 28 April 2005 by a World Trade Organization (WTO) panel that the EU was illegally pushing subsidised sugar onto the world market was expected to feature prominently in the meeting.

European Commission: DG Agriculture and Rural Development: Agricultural markets: Sugar http://ec.europa.eu/comm/agriculture/markets/sugar/index_en.htm

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