Brussels, 29/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - A vigorous exchange took place between French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday last at the European Council of Brussels. The subject of the discussion was reform of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), Mr Blair's spokesperson said on Monday. According to the British press, including The Times, Mr Blair, who was already irritated by France's statements on bringing the British abatement back into question, was put out by the French-German agreement on the future of CAP and had criticised the French President for having a short term view of things that consisted in protecting the limited interests of French farmers with the money of EU taxpayers. Mr Blair finds such national selfishness all the more contemptible as it would penalise the farmers of developing countries with regards market access. According to The Financial Times, Mr Chirac reportedly answered in the presence of other European leaders: "You have behaved badly … I have never been spoken to like that before".
This dispute, which comes in addition to the misunderstanding between the two men on the Iraq issue, is said to have resulted in the cancellation of the traditional Franco-British "summit" programmed for 3 December in France, in Touquet. Tony Blair's spokesperson specified that it is the French government that must convene the next Franco-British summit, and said he hoped the summit would take place before the end of the year.
French Agriculture Minister Hervé Gaymard noted with regret that "the British are against all the common policies because they consider in fact that the European Union is an area of free trade, and not a political area that must build up its identity and have common policies". "They give Europe a great deal, but they must be European", he added.
Presenting the results of the European Council of Brussels to the House of Commons on Monday, Tony Blair recalled for his part that enlargement has been "a goal of successive British governments". The EU will be "generous to the new Member States. (…) But at the same time, we do not want to jeopardise the progress that has been made in reducing agriculture's share of the EU budget from over 60% 20 years ago to 45% now", added the British Prime Minister. Noting that, "fortunately", France and Germany reached agreement just before the Summit on a ceiling for future agricultural spending, he noted that "the latter stages of the Summit" were dominated by the question of knowing whether if, in exchange for such an agreement, CAP reform would be "postponed". "In our view", he said, "such a blanket opposition to reform would have been wholly unacceptable" as it would mean "effectively destroying the current reform proposals of the European Commission" and "seriously inhibit the offer the EU can make in the WTO Doha trade talks".