euro|topics - A new EU agricultural policy?

04/07/2009

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Main focus of Thursday, April 24, 2008

A new EU agricultural policy?

Calls for changes to the EU's agricultural policy and the abolition of subsidies are growing louder in view of the current global food crisis. What can Europe do to improve the situation?

Politiken - Denmark

The EU should accept its share of the responsibility for the global food crisis, the newspaper writes, and harshly criticises EU Commissioner for Agriculture Mariann Fischer Boel. It notes that despite her promises she has become a symbol of Europe's passiveness. "Fischer Boel appears to be mainly preoccupied with managing the kind of planned economy bureaucracy that could even hold its own against that of the former the Soviet Union. Therefore the next possibility of a change in direction won't be for another five years. Cuts in farm subsidies won't be possible before 2013. Until then, the current five-year plan will remain in place as a humanitarian catastrophe that could have been prevented." (24/04/2008)

Le Monde - France

Historian and economist Nicolas Baverez writes that "Europe is on the front lines in the [world food] crisis. Malthusianism, subsidies and protections are the three teats on which our agriculture feeds. As a report on the health of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is in the works, it's urgent to bring the 3.5 million hectares that were set aside back into production. We must rethink agriculture in terms of economic production and not as maintenance of the countryside; it's necessary to dismantle the export subsidies that create considerable price distortions negatively impacting emerging countries. Reinforcing the communitarian preference makes no sense at a time when market prices are at their highest. On the other hand, a real priority should be a harmonisation of standards - notably in health - in the world market." (23/04/2008)

die tageszeitung - Germany

Daniela Weingärtner fears that the emergency measures to help those worst affected by the current food crisis will offer only temporary relief, and calls for the complete restructuring of global agricultural policies: "A change in direction would require considerable political determination, because those who profit from the current funding policy won't give up their privileges without a fight. On the one hand that's Europe's farmers, who are only able to survive in the business thanks to the EU funding which allows them to sell their products for prices that are lower than those of their competitors on global markets. Over the past few years they have had to accept cuts in production subsidies, and now they're defending themselves against further reforms. On the other hand you have the political elites of the newly industrialised and developing countries that prefer to hoard foreign currency in their treasuries rather than implement structural policies that would fill the stomachs of their people." (24/04/2008)

» To the complete press review of Thursday, April 24, 2008

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