Britannia Radio

This impasse is once again the French looking after their own 
farmers.  It would be nice if we could find someone here to do that 
for our farmers!   Hilary Benn attributes the French blocking of 
reforms to "Vested Interests" , though they were backed by Germany 
and Italy.

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TELEGRAPH   21.11.08
The Common Agricultural Policy still doesn't fit

Ever since Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, successive 
British prime ministers have sought to engineer radical reforms of 
the Common Agricultural Policy.

The biggest change came five years ago, when the subsidies paid to 
farmers were uncoupled from the amount they produced, though the 
Labour Government then succeeded in botching the new payments system, 
thereby making farmers suspicious of the case for further reform.  
[Brown, personally, made matters worse by charging the resulkting EU 
fine to the fasrmers by cutting services to them! -cs]

Three years ago, Tony Blair linked a deal to reduce Britain's rebate 
to a promise to overhaul the CAP, and Gordon Brown has also loudly 
demanded major changes.

However, progress remains glacial. Talks in Brussels this week again 
found Britain in a minority among the 27 member states.

This so-called five-yearly "health check" of the CAP was supposed to 
continue along the road set out in 2003, moving farmers further 
towards a free market in agriculture.

While it did not exactly go backwards, there was not much forward 
momentum, either.

The negotiations were characterised by the usual hole-in-the-corner 
deals and conducted in the incomprehensible jargon designed to make 
it impossible for the taxpayers who fund the CAP to understand what 
is being done with their money, nearly half the EU's budget.

If anything, the pace of travel towards a simpler, more market-
focused CAP, appears to have slowed.

The eventual removal of milk quotas will help more productive 
farmers, though not until 2015; more money is going to conserve the 
countryside, but the benefits will be felt less here than on the 
Continent; and distortions remain in the market that disadvantage 
British agriculture.

EU ministers are supposed to be dismantling the protectionist 
superstructure of EU agriculture once and for all. At this rate, it 
will take another 30 years to achieve.