With regard to the positions taken at Cancun, no compromise was possible on agriculture and trade negotiations at the WTO. We could have hoped that the EU's arguments on the issue would have been taken into consideration at least by the European media and politicians in Member States. Nothing of the sort occurred. I am not asking for the arguments of the EU to be agreed to lock stock and barrel but that at least they are discussed. No hope at all. Journalists in Cancun more often than not repeated what they'd read in the English language press or to feel a bit "progressive", echoed the demonstrators' demands for the Cancun meeting to fail. Agitation in the street is obviously more spectacular than the delegates' meetings and it is only right to report them but we could at least leave a little room for the EU's positions, the fruit of long preparatory work, which has been approved at the Council and by all governments of the Union.
Five observations. If those who support the anti-European theses (sometime including those at the European Parliament) can disprove these observations then I'd like to let them try:
1. the suppression of European aid to farmers would mean the end of agriculture in Europe because no production would be profitable at world prices (except in certain refined and expensive specialities, which are in fact threatened by counterfeiting). This would be the death of European civilisation: adieu to our landscape and traditions, to efforts to attain territorial balance, to an equitable level of life in the countryside, to respect for animal welfare, what remains of bio-diversity and towns that are pleasant to live in.
2. The opening up of the borders to all products from other continents, would provoke, according to calculations made by Commission services, the disappearance of four fifths of agricultural land in the Union, as the avalanche of imported products (mainly coming from countries from the Cairns group and the USA) would replace European production. Europeans would be fed by other continents. The EU would lose its food autonomy and be subject to all kinds of blackmail, which would automatically imply the renunciation of a genuine political autonomy.
3. Poor countries would only gain some apparent and ephemeral advantages of getting rid of the EU's agricultural borders because they would be led (by the bate of illusory gain and under political pressure from international trade) to multiply mono-cultures for export, to the advantage of multinationals, businesses and in some cases corrupt political leaders. This would be to the detriment of the people, especially small farmers. Poor countries, on the contrary, need to go back to their food producing methods destroyed by colonialism. Single export crops to the rich countries is one of the worst aspects of the colonial legacy and the clear interest of these countries is to free themselves from it.
4. The EU (which is one of the biggest importer of agricultural products from poor countries and intends to remain so) could in no way import fabulous amounts of foodstuffs, which certain idiotic studies from different experts from UN organisations have announced, because the EU only represents around 5% of the world's population (and the same percentage for the land mass). Keeping the priority, indeed the exclusive objective of international agricultural negotiations as the opening up of the European market, which has its limitations and cannot be extended, as its population is more likely to be overfed rather than underfed, is ludicrous, when millions and millions of human beings suffer from hunger or are threatened by it! World agricultural policy as asserted by the Cairns group and the Group of 21 is an aberration, faced with the real needs of humanity; it would only be profitable to a small groups of countries and well defined interests. Those who support it and by taking to the streets are the playthings of these interests, whereas the reduction of very real suffering of millions of human beings is the least of their worries.
5. Free trade in agriculture is nothing but disastrous. The final example for this is offered by Mexican peasants subject to competition from the USA. Europe's goal of promoting food safety, environmental protection and animal welfare prefigures the only appropriate policy for saving humanity and the world. It should be taken into account as an example and strengthened as much as possible everywhere instead of ignored or caricatured.
Unfortunately, I don't believe in the title I chose for this page at all. It won't be on the morrow that ignorance, demagogy and hypocrisy disappear from this debate.
(F.R.)