Luxembourg, 25/06/2003, (Agence Europe) - In Luxembourg on Tuesday afternoon, the EU's farming ministers resumed negotiations over reform of the Common Agricultral Policy (CAP) by outlining their demands to the Greek Preseincy and the European Commission with a view to reaching political agrmenet on the issue. Rather than unveiling a new compromise, the Presdineyc wants Member States and Commissioner Franz Fischler to play “all their cards on the table” to see where the various sides would be willng to give ground. According to Fischler's spokesperson, a new compromise document could be submitted to the Council the same evening, depending on how the negotiations went.
Various sources suggest that France has confinced its farmers to agree to full 100% decoupling of aid for cereals on condition that Fischler abaondon the proposed cut in the cereal price and reduce the cut in guaranteed prices for dairy products. This does not mean agreement is in the air since various other issues remain to be settled (since the negotiations last Thursday, see EUROPE of 21 Juin 2003, p.11 and 20 juin 2003, p.8), like decouplling of aid for beef (spain and France have called for a 50% decoupling of the slaughter premium, which the Commission would is reportd to agree to), the idea of "financial discipline" (metnioned in the latest compromise rather than using the words “reduction in aid”), price cuts for cereals and dairy products (a compromise solution might be to cut the price of butter in four stages and restructing intervention to 50,000 tonnes, rather than the Commission's proposed 30,000 tonnes) and how funding saved by cutting aid would be redistributed for rural development. The Commission also has to assess various sepcific requests by Member States, for example:
Increasing milk quotas (requested by Portugal and Italy, with italy calling for a rise of 400,000 tonnes on a total of approxmiatley 10 million tonnes);
Increasing aid for nuts (Spanish request);
Leaving rye intervention price unchanged (Finalndd) and in the event the rye intrevention pric is scrapped, compensation for farmers (germany).