The EU on Monday claimed victory from the landmark world trade pact, underlining that it would not have to cut agricultural spending for a decade and that Washington faced a bigger task unravelling its farm subsidies.
The European Commission's agriculture spokesman Gregor Kreuzhuber said the EU had already anticipated many of the reforms called for by the pact.
"... we, the European Union, we have pre-empted all of that by reforming unilaterally," he told a news conference, adding that the United States, by contrast, would now have to overhaul its system of aid and credits to American farmers.
"You can't perceive what we have done in Geneva now as having an immediate impact on the European Union's agriculture budget," he said. "The EU agriculture budget, the part that deals with market measures, is now fixed ... until 2013."
France, the biggest beneficiary of the European Union's 40-billion-euro ($48.27-billion) farm support budget, pressed in the run-up to the eleventh-hour negotiations in Geneva for the bloc's executive Commission to rein in concessions.
It argued that the EU had given too much ground by offering to eliminate export subsidies worth 2.5 billion euros a year to farmers in the absence of concrete commitments from Washington.
"We secured the reciprocal action that we wanted," French Agriculture Minister Herve Gaymard said in an interview with the daily Le Figaro. "The United States accepted reform of its agricultural policy and deserves to be congratulated."
The framework reached at the World Trade Organisation commits the United States to discipline its use of export credits and food aid in exchange for the EU eliminating farm export subsidies.
Despite opposition by Britain, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, which wanted more far-reaching reform, EU leaders agreed in October 2002 to peg the ceiling of farm spending at the equivalent of 45 billion euros ($54.3 billion) plus an annual inflation increment of 1 percent for the period 2007-13.
That means agricultural outlays are set to rise to just over 51 billion euros in 2013.
Comments
Comments are closed.