All at stake for beet growers
Now it looks like adjustments to her proposals, which include a severe price cut of 39% over two years, could be enough to kill off a blocking minority (including Ireland) standing in her way.
The Commissioner's task now is to appease opposition in Poland, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, and Spain enough to swing the Council of Ministers towards a yes vote.
In this Brussels horsetrading there could be huge risks for Irish tillage farmers, and they must now give Agriculture and Food Minister Mary Coughlan a clear mandate on what they want from the eventual reform deal.
Last Monday, Minister Coughlan headed for Brussels with Co Cork farmers leading total opposition to sugar proposals, but a midland beet growers lobby saying they wanted out of beet growing, and calling on the Minister to maximise the value of their beet quota and go for a buy-out scheme.
As for Greencore, if they had a particular objective in mind from the Brussels talks it remained a closely guarded secret.
So it was no surprise that the Minister said the proposals were too radical and were unacceptable in their present form, but didn't reject them outright, saying that less radical price cuts over a longer period and controls on imports were needed.
Farmers committed to beet growing wanted complete rejection of proposals which offered them unviable beet prices and no compensation other than 60% of the price cut.
But last Monday brought bad news for them.
As well as wiping out growers, the proposals would allow Greencore to walk away with €145 million if they closed the Mallow factory, said IFA President John Dillon last Monday.
He said if the EU insisted on closing what has been an important tillage enterprise for 80 years, a proper buy-out scheme would have to be paid directly to beet growers who lose their livelihoods.
But that is not yet on the table and might never even arise in Commissioner Fischler-Boel's wheeling and dealing with reform opponents.
Simon Coveney MEP (Fine Gael) said farmers must unite in supporting the Minister, and give her a beet price target to fight for in Brussels. But whether a viable price is still attainable must now be discussed, after France seemed to side with Fischler-Boel's proposals.
Irish farmers who paid up to €60 per ton for beet contracts, and purchased expensive machinery, face a very nervous few months. Many of them would say it is impossible to compensate them for the loss of sugar beet from their farms. It would endanger their entire tillage operation, because the crop plays such a vital role in their rotations and weed control, as well as being their most profitable enterprise.
But they would get only a lump sum of €119 per tonne of beet if, for example, the entire €730 of compensation proposed for Greencore per tonne of sugar which they produce were to go to farmers a very remote possibility. Greencore's position must be clarified at this crucial stage, as Ireland's sugar industry is picked apart in Brussels.
Close to the negotiations in Brussels, Fine Gael MEP and Irish representative on the Agriculture Committee of the European Parliament, Mairead McGuinness, said this week that Greencore will decide if growers forced out will get compensation, but their No 1 priority may be to concentrate beet growing and sugar processing in the Mallow region if beet growing survives at all.
Another of Ireland's EU sugar negotiation targets must be to secure the proposed restructuring payment for the Greencore factory at Carlow, says MEP Simon Coveney.
