MEPs dig in their heels on farm reform

Date: 17/09/1998

By Myles Neligan

THE European Parliament is threatening to invoke a rarely used clause in the Treaty of Rome in an attempt to force farm ministers to take notice of MEPs' views on the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy.

The Parliament is formally confined to a consultative role in agricultural matters, which means that government ministers have until now felt free to ignore Euro MPs' opinions on farm proposals.

But as EU agriculture ministers' discussions on CAP reform enter a crucial phase, with a formal debate scheduled for 28 September, political groups within the Parliament have unanimously agreed to deploy Article 43 of the treaty in order to make their voices heard.

This article, which provides the legal basis for most agricultural legislation, also entitles MEPs to postpone their final vote on a proposed measure indefinitely when their opinions diverge sharply from the European Commission's.

As proposals cannot become law until the Parliament has given its opinion, the Commission is then forced to negotiate a compromise with MEPs.

The resulting agreement is then submitted to national agriculture ministers, who may reject it only if their opposition is unanimous.

"This procedure gives the Parliament the position of an equal partner in the process of CAP reform," said German Green Wilhelm Graefe zu Baringdorf, the driving force behind the Euro MPs' new show of strength.

MEPs have always had the option of using Article 43 in this way. Yet they have, in practice, shied away from taking it up in order to avoid antagonising the Commission and the Council of Ministers.

The Parliament has invoked it just once before, during discussions on a 1993 proposal on the marketing of certain types of seed which has still not completed the legislative process.

The decision to invoke the article's 'obstruction clause' once again reflects the importance which MEPs attach to making a lasting contribution to the CAP reform process.

"We have to follow this strategy if we are to bring the weight of the Parliament's democratic mandate to bear on the CAP reform debate. The Parliament is quite serious about this," said Graefe zu Baringdorf.

While Euro MPs' own views on CAP reform are sharply divergent, reflecting the different interests of the countries and regions represented by the Parliament's 626 members, there is little doubt that a consensus would emerge in favour of a softer reform than is currently under consideration.

If MEPs carry out their threat to use Article 43, the anti-reform stance of many national governments makes it unlikely that the Council of agriculture ministers could find the unanimity necessary to brush aside the Parliament's views.

Earlier this month, during a meeting between the Parliament's agriculture committee and Austrian Minister Wilhelm Molterer, who currently chairs meetings of EU farm ministers, MEPs solemnly warned him that they had had enough of being ignored in debates over agricultural proposals.

Dutch Liberal MEP Jan Mulder strongly urged Molterer to heed the Parliament's advice, reminding him that MEPs had a decisive role to play in approving the EU's enlargement to the East, an issue which is closely linked to that of CAP reform.

Molterer replied that he would take steps to ensure that national ministers engaged in a constructive dialogue with MEPs, but he urged the Parliament to avoid delays in delivering its opinion on the main reform proposals, which must be approved by March 1999 at the latest.

"It is in our common interest to have an intense and close dialogue with the Parliament. We are happy to consider the MEPs as equal partners in the CAP reform process, but the Parliament's opinion must be known in good time," he told European Voice.

Parliamentary sources stress that it is not their intention to delay reform beyond the March 1999 deadline.

MEPs intend to have their opinion of the proposals ready by the beginning of January, leaving three months for the Parliament and Commission to thrash out a compromise if need be.

"We don't want to upset everybody," said an official in the secretariat of the Parliament's agriculture committee.