Irish did well to broker deal
Apparently he started off with a three-hour session where every farm minister listed their concerns, and he made it clear they were not going to get everything they wanted.
He urged ministers to highlight no more than top three priorities each.
Or the Irish presidency would impose a deal on them.
Getting the ministers to agree their general approach was a vital step towards agreement with the European Parliament and the commission in upcoming talks throughout April, May, and June.
The challenge was huge, with every member state pursuing its own objective in each section of the farm and food industry.
It was a sector now closed off to Ireland — sugar — which proved most difficult to negotiate. On the table was the European Commission’s plan to liberate the EU sugar industry by scrapping national sugar production quotas and guaranteed sugar beet prices in 2015.
Huge repercussions are at stake for the entire food industry, due to its use of sugar as an ingredient.
Europe’s biggest food companies want sugar quotas scrapped, because they are keeping EU sugar prices about 50% higher than world market prices.
At the other side are Europe’s beet growers and a handful of big sugar companies, mostly in France and Germany, enjoying huge profits because the EU sugar regime protects them from foreign competition.
Copa-Cogeca, representing EU farmers and co-ops overall, also wants sugar quotas kept to 2020.
A week earlier, the European Parliament had voted to extend EU sugar production quotas and minimum sugar beet prices to 2020, by a vote margin of 434 to 231.
Mr Coveney was also looking over his shoulder at Irish interests, including farmers, who want sugar quotas scrapped to give Ireland a chance of re-entering the sugar business. The industry here was ended by a previous reform of the sugar industry in 2006, which led to the loss of 20,000 jobs across the European Union.
The EU was forced into the revamp in 2006 to comply with a World Trade Organisation ruling.
In the end, sugar was one of the worst sticking points for the Irish presidency, who had to settle for a 25-2 majority vote in favour of the ministers’ agreement, after two long days of talks.
One of the countries refusing to sign off on the Coveney-brokered agreement was Slovenia, disagreeing with ministers’ support for extending the sugar quota system to 2017.
Slovenia wanted it scrapped in 2015. But their minister said afterwards he is mostly happy with the outcome of the ministers’ talks.
With other divisive measures also on the table, such as greening and uniform per-acre payments for farmers, Mr Coveney did well to get a strong mandate from his ministerial colleagues in his bid to reach a final deal on the CAP before Ireland’s EU presidency ends on June 30.
