Brussels, 19/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - The agriculture ministers of the thirteen candidate countries were invited to a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday by the President of the Agriculture Council, Miguel Arias Canete, to express their views on the European Commission's strategy for the agricultural aspects of enlargement. Most candidate countries argued that if 100% direct aid were not granted, their joining the EU could give rise to distorted competition and lead to unequal treatment compared with current Member States. They stressed that they should be rewarded in a more just manner, as a function of the efforts to be accomplished to transpose into national law all the measures in the Community acquis. They also criticised the reference periods selected for setting quotas (particularly the dairy and sugar quotas).
At a press conference, the Polish agriculture minister Jaroslav Kalinowski said that the greatest problem to be solved as far as the candidate countries were concerned, was guaranteeing equal competition conditions via the different levels of direct aid. He admitted that for the moment, the arguments put forward by the candidate countries and the European Commission went in different directions. At the debate with the EU agriculture ministers, Mr Kalinowski was the most hard-nosed of the candidate country representatives, arguing that the Commission's proposals were "neither generous nor fair". The production quotas (mainly for milk and sugar) were considered by the minister to be too low. He also criticised the Commission's approach on direct aid, because it would go against the principle of equal treatment and would create competition distortion. There was the same discordant note on the subject of setting in place a simplified system for aid payment, that Mr Kalinowski described as discriminatory. He added that his country could have difficulties in releasing the national funds required for structural actions, because of the rate of cofunding proposed from rural development aid (20% to be borne by the national budgets). According to one Commission official, the nine other countries were "more flexible". Hungarian Minister Andras Vonza protested about the subject of reference periods for determining milk quotas, while his counterpart from the Czech Republic, Pavel Koncos, stressed the risk of competition distortion that could be entailed by even a gradual introduction of direct aid. Unlike his Polish counterpart, Mr Koncos welcomed the proposals on the financial interventions under rural development, and above all the rate of cofunding foreseen. The Romanian and Bulgarian ministers also took the floor. The Bulgarian minister again regretted that his country was not part of the first group of future Member States, while the Romanian minister made a more general speech about the experience acquired from the Sapard programmes. Only Austria and the Netherlands took part alongside the Member States. Wilhelm Molterer, speaking for Austria, said that the Commission's package was an "excellent basis for negotiation". Dutch national Laurens-Jan Brinkhorst pointed out that the candidate countries should stop "complaining" about being treated in a discriminatory fashion compared to the current Member States.
Commissioner Franz Fischler mainly sent three messages to the candidate states: (1) Both parties must show proof of more realism in negotiation: the candidate countries must not come back at a charge asking for 100% of direct payments. "I do not believe that the question of direct aid must be considered as the only factor to ensure that negotiations are a success. The candidates should focus on subjects for which there is a margin of manoeuvre for discussion". (2) The study published by the Commission shows that the integration of the new Member States in the CAP has a fair chance of being a success: farmers' incomes in these countries should improve considerably, and it should not create any major imbalance on the enlarged Union market. (3) After the end of the negotiations, the results should be explained and defended so that they take concrete form through ratification procedures. It will therefore be necessary for the future Member States to use good arguments to convince their farmers that accession will be good for them.