Farm subsidies ‘should be scrapped’

THE Common Agricultural Policy should be scrapped, according to an award-winning author on globalisation.

Johan Norberg, head of political ideas at Timbro, the free market think-tank of Swedish enterprise, said the European Union should put an end to farm subsidies.

“CAP was preventing developing countries from providing the European food market with cheaper products,” he said.

Mr Norberg, author of In Defence of Global Capitalism, was addressing the IMI conference in Killarney.

He said Ireland was the most globalised country in the world. This was due to important and wide-ranging reforms. However, he warned that while Ireland had probably moved up from fifth to fourth in the OECD league of wealthy countries, there was no room for complacency.