The Chancellor of the Exchequer Alastair Darling has courted controversy in Brussels with a letter sent to other EU Finance Ministers, effectively calling for an end to CAP support as a response to rising food prices. A suggestion condemned as short sighted and over simplistic by the UFU.
Mr Darling, pictured, also proposes that urgent consideration should be given to extending the suspension of cereal import tariffs, reducing other farm tariffs and reviewing the 10% biofuels target. This is not the first time that the Treasury has ma
de bold pronouncements on the CAP: the 2005 'Vision' paper made similar remarks, but at least set out a longer timetable. Unfortunately, despite some more sensible observations on R&D, Mr Darling's rhetoric is only likely to antagonise other member states and the EU Commission, being seen as extreme and very poorly timed in view of the Health Check proposals due out next week.
The UK NFUs have been working to put clear distance between the extreme views of the Treasury and that of the UK farming community on the CAP.
Meanwhile, the formal publication of proposals to revise the CAP under the Health Check are expected this week. Anticipation is growing about the modifications that may have been made to the proposals through the process of interservice consultation that has now been completed.
This is when other parts of the EU Commission have their chance to have a say on the proposals and it is likely that, for example, DG Environment may well have been pushing for an extension of cross-compliance to cover the Water Framework Directive.
The full article contains 270 words and appears in n/a newspaper.
