Brussels, 12/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - The Agriculture Council is to meet on Monday and Tuesday in Brussels, under the presidency of Miguel Arias Canete, mainly to discuss the agricultural aspects of enlargement, the aid regime for tobacco producers and the funding of marketing measures for nuts and locust beans. The agriculture ministers of the candidate countries will join the Council on Tuesday morning to express their position on the subject of the European Commission's policy paper on the integration of the new Member States in the Common Agricultural Policy (adopted on 30 January at the same time as the framework memo on enlargement funding). The main points on the Agriculture Council's agenda are:
Enlargement: Before the arrival, on Tuesday, of the representatives of candidate countries, the EU15 agriculture ministers are to hold an exchange of views on the agricultural aspects of enlargement. Even if most of the Member States consider that the Commission's general approach is well balanced and realistic, the Netherlands, Austria, United Kingdom and Sweden are again expected to oppose the granting of direct aid to candidate countries before 2007. They stress that such subsidies, which could make the current framework of financial perspectives shaky, could also have an impact on the next negotiations concerning CAP reform. The thirteen candidate countries are invited to join their EU counterparts on Tuesday morning, but the Spanish Presidency hoped that only ten of them would take the floor (all except Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria). As a "precautionary measure", it was recommended that European ministers should not react after speeches by candidate countries.
Tobacco: As announced in EUROPE of 7 March, p.10, the main problem that should be settled at the ministerial level (to reach a political agreement on this subject) concerns the reference, in a "recital" of the proposal, to the prospect of abolishing aid in favour of tobacco producers. The last meeting of the Special Agriculture Committee (SAC), which was held on Tuesday morning, did not allow a solution to this problem to be found. Denmark (especially), Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom hope to send a powerful message along these lines to the public, unlike the producer countries (Greece, Italy, France and Portugal), which want to delete the recital. Furthermore, the Spanish Presidency has every hope of finding a compromise on the more technical aspects of the issue, such as funding and the tasks allocated to the Community tobacco fund.
The Council will seek to reach a political agreement on a proposal aimed at extending by one year the aid measures for the nut sector. This will not be easy as five countries (D, DK, S, NL, UK) consider that there should be an end to the ever-renewed extension for these measures (the Commission must finalise a definitive proposal in June). Furthermore, Greece and Italy made specific demands concerning hazelnuts.