Brussels, 12/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - During the next few days (probably on Tuesday), the European Commission is to forward to Member States the draft common positions for each of the ten candidate countries on the last outstanding issues of the agricultural chapter. Commissioner Franz Fischler should not distance himself from the principles set out in his guidelines of 30 January 2002, namely: - gradual introduction of direct aid to new member countries over a 10 year period; - increased support under rural development programmes; - and a choice of recent reference periods (1995/99) for calculating quotas.
Only a few adjustments will be proposed on certain volumes of quotas or instruments for managing supply, in order to take into account the latest statistical information provided by candidate countries. For all the candidate countries, the introduction of direct aid will be carried out according to the following two-stage scenario: (1) 25% in 2004, 30% in 2005 and 35% in 2006 of the amount of aid benefiting other EU countries; (2) as of 2006, increased payments until they reach a level of 100% in 2013. The Commission is also to recommend that the Fifteen adopt the "simplified" (and optional) approach of paying direct aid (average aid per hectare for each country, depending on the surface area of farming land used) and the possibility, for these countries, to be able to complete this direct aid by national aid, according to well defined conditions.
The draft common positions will be examined by the Council's working group on enlargement, then by the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper) with a view to reaching EU common positions to be submitted to the candidate countries during negotiations (at the level of the Foreign Affairs Ministers).