EU sugar proposals meet opposition
- Hundreds of farmers protest plan
Kaieteur News
July 15, 2004
BBC: Measures announced by the European Union yesterday to reform its much criticised sugar regime, were met with stiff opposition by European farmers.
Hundreds of farmers marched through Brussels to protest the plan, which would reduce trade advantages for European farmers, while retaining preferences for developing countries.
The measures outlined by the EU’s agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler include cutting the EU’s sugar production quota over the next five years and reducing the guaranteed prices for European sugar producers by one-third beginning in 2005.
The proposed reforms of richer nations’ agricultural subsidies are a key demand of developing countries.
A statement by the commission said the EU will continue to reserve preferential terms for sugar exports from developing countries in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group.
“This reform gives the EU sugar sector and developing countries a realistic perspective. Our consumers will see much more market orientation, developing countries much less trade distortions,” Mr Fischler said.
But campaigners for sugar producers in the Caribbean and other developing countries say the proposed changes don’t go far enough.
Under the proposals, the price at which the EU intervenes to prop up European sugar producers would drop from 632 euros ($782.80) a tonne to 421 euros ($521) in two phases over three years.
And the minimum price that EU beet sugar producers are guaranteed for their produce would go down from 43.6 euros ($54) per tonne to 27.4 euros (33.9) again in two phases over three years.
And the total EU quota for sugar would be reduced by 2.8 million tonnes to 14.6 million over four years. But individual EU countries could trade their quotas with others.
EU countries are major players on the world sugar production market. Critics have said that the subsidies and quotas have left European producers immune to global competition to the detriment of poorer nations.
The proposals announced yesterday would be the most radical shake up of the EU’s sugar regime since its launch in 1968.
However, the proposals are just that and any reform would have to be agreed by the 25 members of the European Union.
Already France, which has a strong farming lobby, has indicated that it wants any change postponed.