European Union" "
To the surprise even of its own staff, the European Commission has grasped the occasion of the publication of the mid-tern review of the EU’s agricultural regime, adopted by the Berlin summit in 1999 and endorsed by Agenda 2000, to present a Communication which calls for a sweeping reform of the CAP, the common agricultural policy that absorbs almost half of the entire EU budget. Franz Fischler, European Commissioner for Agriculture, declared that “the new system, by maintaining the stability of farmers’ income, will release them from their obligation to programme and manage their production in relation to the subsidies they receive and enable them to take decisions on the basis of market demand and the needs of society”. The Communication of the executive which intends to respect the budgetary allocations of Agenda 2000 and which should be translated into legislative proposals by November is based on the drastic reduction of direct payments and on the introduction of a single subsidy to income by farm, decoupled from production. These measures would be initially applicable only to some products, such as durum wheat, rice, beef and sheep meat. Fischler also explained the dual objective of the Commission’s political strategy for the agricultural sector, which consists on the one hand in promoting the quality, rather than the quantity, of production and, on the other, in allocating the resources saved to “facilitate the process of enlargement, to better defend the CAP in the framework of the World Trade Organization, and to reinforce the link between producer and consumer”. Part of the expenditures subtracted from farm subsidies will be used for rural development with the aim of improving the levels of quality, food security and animal welfare. Many farm organizations in various member states have severely criticized the Commission’s proposals, and promised to give battle against a reform which is necessarily linked to the agricultural negotiations with the countries seeking to enter the EU. The Council of EU agricultural ministers, held in Brussels on 15 and 16 July, emphasized the total opposition of France, Portugal and Spain to the reform proposals, while Germany and Sweden favourable to the new strategy have expressed their “disappointment” that it does not go far enough and say that “the Commission could have dared more”.
