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Don't blame us, EU minister says

Franz Fischler, the departing agriculture minister for the EU, said on Friday that US policymakers can no longer use Europe as their scapegoat in the global battle over farm subsidies.

After nine years of fighting to trim Europe's farm payments system and increase spending for food safety and the environment, Fischler said it was time to lay to rest the old stereotypes of subsidized European farmers amassing mountains of excess butter and lakes of surplus wine.

"American farmers now receive 10 times more than European farmers, but the myths haven't died," Fischler said. "But here they act as if nothing has happened over the last few years, as if Europe hasn't made painful reforms to reduce their farm supports."

The issue of dealing with farm subsidies is urgent as the WTO resumed talks this week on agriculture after the US and Europe accused each other of blocking the negotiations.

Fischler said in an interview on Friday that he had reached tentative agreement in Geneva, Switzerland, last week on "90 percent of the trade agenda" with the Group of 20, the developing nations that were pivotal in talks in Cancun, Mexico, last year.

The countries, which include India, Brazil, China and South Africa, have said this latest round of global talks must include the reduction or elimination of many of the agricultural subsidies in rich nations.

To advance the negotiations, Fischler said Europe was opening its markets to cotton exports from poor West African nations and would finance the countries' export programs, another demand at Cancun. At the same time, Europe is reducing subsidies for its own cotton farmers and its cotton exports.

In another nod to poor nations hoping that agricultural exports will be their ticket out of poverty, Fischler said the European nations would begin talks next month on opening the Continent's markets to sugar, a commodity that is as highly protected there as in the US.

"You don't see that in the United States," Fischler said. "The reality is we are moving away from the old-style supports of the 1990s but the United States isn't -- it has taken a step backward."

Washington, however, sees things differently.

In his latest trade proposal, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick put the onus on Europe's agricultural export subsides as the biggest stumbling block in global talks.

"Export subsidies distort trade more than any other measure," Zoellick wrote in a letter to trade ministers.
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