Let's work to build a vibrant, sustainable rural culture in our own countries, and healthy domestic markets and egalitarian access to resources in the third world (and vice versa).
Peter
Ian Murray wrote:
Short takes a tilt at CAP
EU subsidies will wreck trade talks and drive up poverty, says development
secretary
Larry Elliott, economics editor
Tuesday November 19, 2002
The Guardian
Clare Short, the international development secretary, will today attack the
common agricultural policy with a warning to the European Union that failure
to cut huge farming subsidies will deepen poverty in developing countries by
wrecking global trade talks.
Her intervention is a clear sign of Britain's belief that last month's deal
between Germany and France to ring-fence spending on the CAP for the next 10
years will harm poor countries. She will say that resistance to measures
that would prevent over-production and the dumping of excess crops on world
markets will "destroy" the chances of trade liberalisation talks succeeding.
She will urge today's meeting of the EU general affairs and external
relations council in Brussels, which is finalising Europe's policy on trade
and development, to join opposition to production subsidies that lead to
goods being sold on world markets at prices lower than they cost to produce.
The World Trade Organisation launched the current round of talks in Doha
last No vember, but progress has so far been stymied by the failure of the
West to make good promises on agricultural reform. Pressure from seven of
the EU's 15 member states - France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Austria
and Ireland - has resulted in any mention of CAP reform being omitted from
the draft to be discussed by ministers today.
Ms Short will tell the meeting that any money Europe spends on agriculture
must be diverted into support for rural communities rather than be used to
finance over-production. "We must be committed to reform of the CAP to
deliver on the Doha measures. Failure to do so would cause fatal damage to
the prospects of Doha succeeding", she said last night.
Developing countries had only signed up for a new round of talks in Doha a
year ago because they had won assurances that the EU and the US would take
steps to scale back subsidies for farmers. "Developing countries made it
clear that there would be no trade round unless they made gains. That's why
the promises were made. Now the European Union has to deliver."
Ms Short said that unless the EU agreed to "disconnect pro duction from
subsidies, it will be destroying Doha. We had an unprecedented consensus a
year ago when the talks were launched.
"If the Doha round goes sour it will break that up, it will endanger the WTO
and it will lead to the further marginalisation of poor countries."
Her intervention in the increasingly bitter row over the future of the CAP
comes as the chancellor, Gordon Brown, plans to call on the West to support
a new deal for Africa.
He will spend the next few months seeking support among the G7 industrial
nations for a four-part package, which would include better access to rich
western markets and a doubling of aid to $100bn (£63bn) a year in return for
economic stability and proposals by poor countries to root out corruption.
Britain was furious at last month's deal between France's Jacques Chirac and
Germany's Gerhard Schröder to maintain spending on the CAP, which costs
Europe £25bn a year. Sources said that France's avowed concern about the
plight of Africa and Spain's interest in Latin America were at odds with
their point-blank refusal to discuss meaningful CAP reform.
