The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, was in Brussels yesterday to present the German EU presidency with an alternative, slimmed-down reform programme for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Instead of cuts of 30 per cent in the guaranteed price for beef, Mr Walsh proposed cuts of 15 per cent and made the case for a continuation of the EU's present milk regime.
The Minister also made clear that, although Ireland will not oppose French degressivity proposals for progressive cuts in direct aid to farmers in principle, he would insist on a differentiation between sectors and on excluding more Irish farms from the cuts than those spared in a recent Commission paper.
The Commission estimated that half of Irish farms could be excluded from the progressive cuts if those in receipt of less than £3,900 a year in direct aid were exempt. "The current threshold is far too low," Mr Walsh said, warning that even if set at £12,000, a fifth of Irish farmers would still face cuts. The talks were part of a series of bilateral meetings between the presidency and the member-states on Agenda 2000 ahead of next week's marathon Farm Council, expected to run for three, four or even five days. While the Commission's Agenda 2000 proposals are based on reducing farm prices to world market levels in the hope of opening up third country markets, Mr Walsh's reforms effectively write off world markets as an outlet for Europe's excess farm production and concentrate on creating an internal balance of supply and demand within the EU.
That is straightforward in milk, where a broad balance already exists, but beef would require tough measures to cut production. Mr Walsh suggests that those who have more than their quota of suckler cows would face a prohibitive tax or "super-levy" along the lines of that imposed in the milk sector. Mr Walsh told journalists that even with Irish beef prices currently 25 per cent below those on mainland Europe, and the support of export refunds, Irish beef was having enormous difficulties in world markets. "The main aim must be to bring balance to the internal market," he said. Mr Walsh also expressed concern that the EU's subsidies to maize silage, used to feed beef in many continental countries, were shifting the economic advantage away from the more environmentally friendly methods of Irish beef production in favour of intensive methods contrary to EU policy.
He rejected suggestions that Irish beef producers were not willing to produce the sort of animals which consumers in the rest of Europe wanted to buy, insisting that in the aftermath of the BSE saga many retail outlets throughout the Union were deliberately excluding foreign-produced meat.
