Brussels, 19/10/2005 (Agence Europe) - At a conference of European farmers in Strasbourg on 18 October, WTO Director General Pascal Lamy said the Doha trade round would give EU farmers the chance to get a double dividend - benefitting from the impact of the 2003 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and getting other WTO members to reform their own farm systems. European Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said the outcome of the WTO negotiations would not lead to new CAP reforms.
Pascal Lamy said the EU should demonstrate greater flexibility over the issue of market access. The latest figures proposed in the Doha trade negotiations are much too far-removed, he said, adding that it can't be said that Europe hasn't been given anything in return for its proposals. The WTO Director General was at pains to reassure the representatives of sixteen European farm organisations, who warned the European Commission not to overshoot its mandate in the farm negotiations (see EUROPE 9051). Lamy said the US had crossed a threshold in Geneva last week when they agreed to cut domestic farm subsidies. With less than two months to go before the Hong Kong WTO Summit, there is general agreement, said Lamy, that competition in the farm industry had to be fair and subsidies had to be restrained.
Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said that nothing she has said to date has exceeded her mandate. There would have to be sacrifices of course, she pointed out, before the Hong Kong summit, but from all sides. Farming is not the only chapter being negotiated, she added, saying that whatever the outcome, it would not challenge the 2003 CAP reform. She added that progress had to be made in a coordinated manner to reach an overall balance in agriculture.
I have the painful feeling that the EU negotiators are capitulating to the WTO said French MEP Joseph Daul, President of the European Parliament's Agriculture Committee. It is time to tell the Commission it is going beyond the pale, he warned. The President of the General Committee of Agricultural Cooperatives in the EU (COGECA), Eduardo Baamonde, urged the Commission not to make concessions at any price.