Sugar reforms are a matter of simple justice
Those who take the Jesuitical view argue that, under WTO rules, states have the right to take protective action in their own backyards when they believe good reason exists.
However, the backdrop to all of this was the growing demand by the US for the rest of the world to open up their doors to US goods and the goods of its allies such as Canada and other major grain and dairy-producing nations such as Australia and New Zealand.
These big intensive producers of milk and grain have long been sceptical of what the EU subsidy regime has been doing to world markets.
Free trade and open markets sound great in theory.
Tell that, though, to the poorer countries when they are being ripped off by intermediaries who then sell their raw materials at totally inflated prices for huge profits. That’s the old way of doing things and the poorer countries are beginning to hit back.
At Cancun they walked out of the current talks saying their plight was not being taken seriously.
Our problem is that we have been used to cheap goods for too long coming in from these nations, while at the same time insisting on being able to sell subsidised products in their already poor and under-developed home markets.
In terms of basic human justice, what Europe and the rest of the world has been doing is nothing short of an outrage. It is robbery in two directions and the under-developed countries are finally finding a voice.
When they walked out of Cancun the WTO talks were brought to an abrupt halt. Good for them.
On the bigger stage, the tussle between Europe and the rest of the world is building nicely.
So far Europe looks to be taking most of the backlash compared with farmers elsewhere in the developed world. It is well known that the reform of the sugar industry will cause major problems for the sector.
Up to 1,000 jobs could put at risk and the long-term valuation Greencore, formerly Irish Sugar, will be undermined.
The few thousand farmers in the beet growing area are a sector of agriculture that have done seriously well out of the EU and out of Irish farming for a long time.
Sugar prices and the restrictions on sugar imports into Ireland have left them well-off. But as firms are beginning to learn, even if the hard way, all good tings come to an end.
The EU sugar regime has been untouched for nearly 35 years and there is no doubt that Ireland will be hard hit, even if the total overhaul of the sector is scaled back to some degree.
Critics have accused the EU of distorting world trade and harming the interests of the Third World.
In effect, as has been said often enough in this column, EU subsidies, though well-intentioned, have become a mechanism to rob the bite from the mouths of the poor.
Last year Australia, Brazil and Thailand challenged the EU policy, arguing that the bloc’s sugar subsidies had driven world prices below production costs.
At the time Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler, expressed the hope that sugar reform would go some way to ameliorating the charges being made against EU farm policy.
In the context of giving fair play to poorer countries the whingeing by our politicos is shameful.
Dr Fischler said at the time that the decision to engage in drastic reform sent a clear signal to those who were concerned about the distortion of the subsidies. There can be no going back on this in the long-run.
Thanks to the EU, we have put on nearly 800,000 jobs in the past 10 years.
The loss of 1,000 due to a long overdue reform hardly constitutes an injustice, despite the obvious hardship involved form some farmers and workers dependant on the sector.
