Corfu, 15/05/2003 (Agence Europe) - At their meeting in Corfu (Greece) on Monday, the EU Member States' representatives on the Special Agricultural Committee (SAC) were divided over the effectiveness of publicity campaigns about the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) when they examined the Commission's report assessing the implementation of the April 2000 regulation on this issue. Denmark and the United Kingdom (and Slovenia, of the candidate countries that now attend the meetings) expressed doubt about the effectiveness of the campaigns and the use of money and resources, which they described as over-bureaucratic. France, Portugal (and Poland) hailed the success of the campaigns. The Netherlands and Finland said that many requests from organisations based in their countries had not led to information campaigns because of the complex administrative requirements. The Commission suggested simplifying the forms to be completed by organisations and associating wanting to be funded by the programme and pledged that activity would be better targetted in the future.
There are two types of information campaigns:
1) Campaigns cofunded by the EU connected with initiatives by other bodies (like the committee
of professional farming organisations in the UE, COPA, and the European Young Farmers Council CEJA). Such campaigns accounts for 60% of the budget. The main beneficiary countries of such campaigns are France, Belgium (since most beneficiaries are based in Brussels), Italy and Spain. The campaigns last year covered current events like reform of the CAP, enlargement and the WTO negotiations.
2) Campaigns wholly funded by the EU concerning events like Berlin's Green Week, conferences and seminars in the EU and candidate countries, reports (like Eurobarometer polls) and other publications. These campaigns have a more institutional flavour and are more targeted on experts. The Commission explained that it was difficult to fully implement the funding available in the programme (EUR 8.5 million in 2002 and EUR 6.5 million in 2003 - the cut is due to various Member States' lack of interest in the programme) because of a lack of requests from other bodies.
How the SAC will operate in a 25 Member State EU
To improve operations in the enlarged EU, the SAC in Corfu decided to cut delegations' speaking time to two minutes, but this rule will not apply to the Commission given the time that is required to outline legislation and provide answers and explanations to delegations' queries. Other suggestions were put forward to facilitate the functioning of the committee (which is responsible for preparing for ministerial meetings) such as greater use of information technology (e-mail), electronic voting and more frequent use of written material.