Fischer Boel warns on rural policy

The EU has been warned rural policy will be one of the first targets for cuts if the big net contributor member states get their way in capping the budget for 2007-2013 at 1% of the union’s gross national income.

“And those cuts will probably cripple it,” Mariann Fischer Boel, the EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development told a conference in Slovenia last weekend. She said there are many people who think this would be a sacrifice worth making, but she asked them to think again. She asked was it sufficient to devote most of the attention to cities, sometimes forgetting about the countryside?

“Our cities will always be the hubs of industry. But 90% of the EU’s territory is rural, and 50% of its population lives there. Do we want such places to be areas with vital economies, served by modern technology? Or would we rather neglect them, starving them of the support they need and condemning them to stagnation?”