Little common ground on farm reform

Date: 21/05/1998

By Myles Neligan

FARM Commissioner Franz Fischler will reach a major staging post in his bid to overhaul the Common Agricultural Policy next week.

EU ministers will meet to draw up a report outlining the common ground which has emerged so far.

Fischler insists that progress to date has been encouraging, stressing that all member states agree at least that the status quo cannot be maintained.

But there are growing fears amongst EU diplomats and officials that the farm ministers' report will serve only to highlight a complete lack of agreement between governments on any of the European Commission's concrete reform proposals.

"Quite frankly, there is no clear-cut point of agreement between the member states at all at the moment," said a Council of Ministers official. "There isn't even a clear majority in favour of carrying out any kind of reform at all in the dairy and cereals sectors."

Recent discussions between officials have revealed that, broadly speaking, all EU countries except Germany are willing to accept Fischler's proposal to cut the Union's guaranteed beef prices by 30%.

However, only the UK, Sweden, and Denmark are unambiguously in favour of his suggestion that dairy and cereal prices should be slashed by 15% and 20% respectively, with Bonn leading a group of six countries which is firmly resisting proposed reforms in these sectors.

The UK presidency is nevertheless hoping that it will be able to coax EU agriculture ministers into signing up to a document which goes beyond the bland platitudes which characterised the first ministerial progress report on CAP reform in November 1997.

In particular, British Farm Minister Jack Cunningham intends to ask his EU counterparts to commit themselves to firm deadlines for reaching a final agreement on the Commission's key proposals at their meeting next Monday (25 May).

But given the depth of ministerial divisions, EU officials admit that there is little chance the report will contain anything of substance.

As EU procedures require the ministers to sign up unanimously to the document, observers expect that any significant statements or commitments will be excised from the final draft.

Council sources say that even a firm pledge to complete the reform negotiations by the Commission's preferred deadline of July 1999, just before the next round of World Trade Organisation farm talks begins, is unlikely to survive ministerial wrangling.

"Not all the member states agree that we need to conclude the reforms in their entirety before the next WTO round," said one official.