Row looms as 970m euro tobacco subsidies set to go up in smoke

Date: 07/03/02

By David Cronin

DEEP divisions are likely to surface between MEPs next week over an attempt to thwart a European Commission plan which advocates phasing out subsidies to tobacco growers.

The Parliament's agriculture committee has adopted a report that says references to eliminating tobacco should be erased from a recent Commission proposal on sustainable development.

Due to be debated by the full assembly next Thursday (14 March), the report by Portuguese Conservative Arlindo Cunha emphasises how some of the EU's most deprived rural areas rely heavily on leaf tobacco and argues that switching to other crops would prove difficult for farmers.

No decision on the future of the payments should be made, it states, until studies currently underway on the related issues are completed.

But Dutch Liberal and anti-smoking campaigner Jules Maaten described the committee's vote as a 'rearguard action'. He said it was regrettable that an earlier draft of the Cunha report had been considerably altered so that the final version opposed the Commission plan. 'Unfortunately, the agriculture committee has reverted to type,' he added.

The projected level of subsidies for tobacco growers this year is about €970 million. Although the amount paid to growers has shrunk in recent years, the crop still accounts for about 130,000 full-time and 400,000 seasonal jobs in the EU. Italy and Greece are the two member states most dependent on the crop.

The issue has also polarised the European Commission. Farm chief Franz Fischler is a staunch defender of the payments, while Health Commissioner David Byrne wants them scrapped.

Deep divisions are likely to surface between MEPs over an attempt to thwart a European Commission plan which advocates phasing out subsidies to tobacco growers.