Two-stage CAP plan for EU applicants

Date: 11/06/1998

By Rory Watson

CALLS for the Common Agricultural Policy to be introduced to the applicant countries of central and eastern Europe in two separate phases are gathering support inside the European Parliament.

Under the scheme, EU measures to promote rural development and farm modernisation, along with veterinary and phytosanitary legislation, would be applied during the first stage of the transition period.

Only later would the most costly aspects of the CAP be introduced as prices were gradually aligned and direct financial support introduced.

The proposal, tabled by Portuguese Christian Democrat MEP Arlindo Cunha, a former farm minister, has already been endorsed by the agriculture committee and looks set to be approved by the full Parliament during its plenary session in Strasbourg next week.

The suggestion is contained in the initial response from the MEPs' to the CAP reform plans set out in the European Commission's Agenda 2000 programme to prepare the Union for enlargement.

While acknowledging the need for reform, the normally conservative agriculture committee insists that the existing policy should not be dismantled.

It also argues that any changes should acknowledge that farming is not just about food production, but involves other considerations including environmental, social, care for the countryside and protection of a particular way of life.

As a result, the committee is recommending that the CAP be renamed the common agricultural and rural policy.

The draft opinion which will be put to the full Parliament reiterates a traditional complaint from southern European member states that the existing guaranteed price policy is unfairly weighted towards northern crops, and demands improved arrangements for Mediterranean products.

It also maintains that the price cuts now on the table for cereals, milk and beef are excessive.

As a general principle, the committee agrees that farmers' incomes should be linked to production and that direct aid should be complementary to, and not a substitute for, traditional price support mechanisms. Nor, it says, should such aid open the door to a renationalisation of the CAP.

With internal EU policies having to take even greater account of world trade rules, the agriculture committee is recommending that the Union adopt an aggressive stance during the next round of World Trade Organisation negotiations.

In particular, it advances the idea of guaranteeing specific rural exceptions from the global conditions now attached to agricultural trade.

In parallel with the more fundamental reform programme, the Parliament will next week examine the latest annual farm-price fixing exercise.

The agriculture committee has rejected a call from this year's rapporteur, French Europe of Nations MEP Edouard des Places, for a general 1.7% price increase across the board.

However, it has given its support, albeit in some cases only narrowly, to a series of changes responding to specific national interests.

Although the committee has accepted ten of the market regulations being proposed by the Commission unamended, it is recommending that the full Parliament push through alterations in the remaining eight.

It would like to see wider use made by small farms of the grubbing-up premium designed to cut back on surplus wine production. By reducing the qualifying threshold for EU aid for vine destruction from 25 to ten ares, a large number of German farms would become eligible for the first time.

At the same time, it is urging that the right to plant new vines for quality wines in specified regions should be extended from eight to 12 years - a measure which would benefit French producers in particular.

Equally, the support being given for an increase in prices for the three varieties of tobacco produced in southern Europe will be of particular benefit to Greek farmers.

One major innovation in the demands likely to be tabled by the Parliament this year is being prompted by the arrival of the single currency.

The agriculture committee has given its support to Des Places' call for a special scheme to compensate farmers in member states joining the single currency zone for the possible disappearance of the green ecu at the start of next year.

EP reaction to the Commission's plan to reform the CAP in the light of prospective EU enlargement.