EU delays key debate on olive oil and tobacco reform

National politics forced the European Union to put back by a month a crucial debate on shaking up its olive oil, tobacco and cotton sectors, officials said on Monday.
Reform of the three so-called Mediterranean products, which are of strategic importance to countries such as Spain, Italy and Greece, will now be thrashed out at an emergency meeting of EU farm ministers on April 19.
"The political realities are that you have a Spanish minister who is on the way out, the Greek minister in the first days in the job and the French minister isn't here," one EU diplomat said, referring to the March 22-23 farm meeting.
EU ministers will meet in Luxembourg on April 19 and 20 to hammer out the Mediterranean reform, and will meet there again a week later for a previously scheduled session.
Spain, as the world's largest single olive oil producer, is keenly interested in any reform of this sector. Its long-standing farm is now in a caretaker role after his party's recent electoral defeat by the Socialists.
In 1998, when the EU last agreed an olive oil reform, Spain's demands for a higher production quota nearly scuppered a broad package of other farm measures, as thousands of its farmers took to the streets in protest.
France is the largest beneficiary by far of EU farm spending and is a minor producer of tobacco and olive oil. French Farm Minister Herve Gaymard did not attend this week's ministerial meeting as he is campaigning in France's regional elections.
These three states, backed by Italy and Portugal, form a five-strong group that has voiced concerns over European Commission plans to overhaul the three sectors along the same lines as the EU's radical farm reform thrashed out last June.
For these products, the Commission proposes following the EU's June reform, cutting the link between subsidy and production. It wants the reform to enter into force in 2005.
For tobacco, the idea is a phased removal of the subsidy-output link and abolition of national production quotas. This has infuriated Italy, for example, which says the proposal would ruin farmers in its poorest areas.
"It's clear that there is no spirit to compromise in March," a Commission official told reporters. "If you look at the overall political picture, the decision not to push too hard was a wise one. Certain states are not in a position to decide yet."