EU foreign ministers delivered a mild reproach to the European trade commissioner Peter Mandelson yesterday over his negotiating tactics in the run-up to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in Hong Kong in December.
However, at an emergency meeting in Luxembourg they backed away from a demand by France that any new negotiating offers prepared by the European Commission for the Doha round of talks must first be approved by member states.
The emergency meeting was called at the behest of a group of agricultural member states, including Ireland, which accused Mr Mandelson of offering too many concessions on agricultural subsidies and tariffs to other trading blocs in recent negotiations.
Mr Mandelson, who is charged with negotiating a trade deal for the EU, last week proposed a 70 per cent cut in trade distorting farm subsidies, cuts of at least 50 per cent in its highest farm import tariffs and fewer "sensitive goods", which the EU protects the most. This followed a proposal by the US for cuts in agricultural subsidies.
At the meeting yesterday, ministers agreed a tougher mechanism to force Mr Mandelson to issue more regular reports to member states in the run up to the Hong Kong talks to assure them he is not giving up too much ground on agriculture and exceeding his mandate.
The mechanism was insisted upon by France and several other EU states, including Ireland, and will force the commission to undertake technical analysis to confirm its actions are within the mandate granted by EU member states for the negotiations.
However, Mr Mandelson maintained that he still had the freedom to negotiate tactics in the upcoming discussions.
"It will be the commission doing the explaining, nobody else," he said. "This meeting has certainly cleared the air and cleared up the question marks over the commission's recent actions and it allows us to go further into the negotiations in a united way."
Four Ministers, including Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern, attended the meeting in Luxembourg, sending a clear signal of the importance attached by the Government to defending agriculture in the upcoming talks.
The Minister for Agriculture, Mary Coughlan, said she thought the meeting with Mr Mandelson and EU member states was necessary to ensure agriculture was not used as a bargaining chip.
She said the EU was happy to look at a reduction in export subsidies, but only if domestic subsidies in the US were also tackled. She also warned that the US negotiating proposal was based on a piece of legislation that had not been approved by Congress.
The reaction to the outcome of the meeting at home was mixed with the IFA president, Mr John Dillon, saying the European Council of Foreign Ministers had repeated that the existing CAP reform constitutes the limit of Mr Mandelson's negotiating brief.
