Brussels, 26/10/2005 (Agence Europe) - Despite the unsurprising protests by the 11 countries which stand to lose out from a radical reform of the common market organisation (CMO) for sugar (EUROPE 9056), the agriculture ministers of the Member States of the EU seem to be in a position to reach agreement on the dossier at their forthcoming meeting, from 22 to 24 November. At Tuesday's meeting of the Agriculture-Fisheries Council, which was held in Luxembourg, most delegations stressed the need for the regime to be modified. Italy, Spain, Greece and Ireland showed the most opposition to the proposals put forward last July by the European Commission. The Commissioner for Agriculture, Mariann Fischer Boel, reiterated the importance of reaching an agreement in November, ahead of the ministerial meeting of the WTO in Hong Kong. "Sugar is one of the key elements in agricultural negotiations at the WTO, and the Commission needs solid arguments if it is to resist the pressure for extreme liberalisation in this sector", she told the ministers, adding: "how can I defend the European sugar regime if I don't know what it is that I'm supposed to be defending?". The Commissioner argued that progress had been made in negotiations between the Member States, and indicated that she was prepared to make certain concessions in the two following areas: - compensatory aid paid to sugar-beet producers (hit by price reductions) will be decoupled from production (single payment per holding); - the restructuring fund to be set up can be used to benefit sugar-beet producers (rather than just factories forced to close down). Furthermore, the Parliamentary committee on agriculture has accepted that the Commission will reach its political agreement before it has had the opportunity to take position (on 29 November) on the report by Jean-Claude Fruteau (PES, France) (EUROPE 9038). This means that the EP will not be able to vote on the dossier in plenary until January 2006.
During the debate, various countries, such as Italy, pleaded in favour of partial decoupling of compensatory aid to be paid to producers, whereas others, such as Denmark and the United Kingdom, supported 100% decoupling. Several countries expressed their concern at the consequences of the "Everything but Arms" initiative (complete opening up of the European market to sugar from the least developed countries in 2009). On the restructuring fund, several countries (including the Netherlands and Slovenia) called for compensation to be possible in case of the partial dismantling of factories (which is not contained in a proposal).