Ruled by Prince of Darkness
Mandelson certainly cannot count any European farmers among his friends, and few, if any, EU agriculture ministers.
In March, Ireland’s Agriculture Minister Mary Coughlan and 11 of her colleagues told EU trade and agriculture commissioners Mandelson and Mariann Fischer Boel of their concerns that EU market access for food imports, domestic support and export subsidies are being negotiated away by Mandelson in World Trade Organisation negotiations.
But Mandelson ignored them and, within a month, signalled to world trading partners the EU was willing to offer more agriculture concessions, within the limits of its negotiating mandate.
In June, he went further, saying if the G20 countries and the US improved their offer, the EU would do likewise.
Three months later, Mandelson continues to ignore EU agriculture ministers, promising new concessions if the collapsed WTO negotiations resume.
He said the EU needs to bring cuts in its average agricultural tariff, from the 39% already offered, closer to the cut requested by the G20. He said this would be the last move the EU can make. But can anyone trust him, if the talks resume after US legislative elections in early November?
French President Jacques Chirac won’t be able to trust him. In May, he said the EU had done everything it could on agricultural trade, and the EU could go no further without concessions from others.
German industrialists won’t trust Mandelson; they welcomed the July collapse of WTO talks, saying it prevented “a one-sided liberalisation by only industrial nations which would be negative to the competitiveness of many German companies”.
EU farmers have much more to worry about than “negative competitiveness”. Mandelson himself admits his WTO offers would impose “a heavy human and social cost on farmers in Europe”.
“We are looking down the barrel of massive losses in EU farm receipts,” he says.
EU farmers now wonder if there is any real support for their plight. At this week’s Council of Europe, Commissioner Fischer-Boel fobbed off calls from French, Italian, Irish, Polish, Hungarian, Austrian, Cypriot, Spanish, Portuguese and Luxembourg agriculture ministers that no unilateral concessions be granted by Mandelson in WTO talks.
They remain at the mercy of the trade commissioner, one of Europe’s most manipulative politicians, sacked twice from Tony Blair’s government for sailing too close to the wind.
He admits that his trade offers will devastate EU farming; yet Jacques Chirac has been the only head of state to take him on. No help can be expected from within the 25 commissioners. MEP Mairead McGuinness suspects that the Mandelson mantra of downsizing EU agriculture is influencing the Commission’s thinking. She warns that EU dairy farmers are being forced to accept ever lower milk prices, because the Commission wants to cut milk output, in order not to upset WTO negotiations.
This European Commission will serve until October 31, 2009. More and more farmers wonder which will go first, them or a commission which seems hell-bent on putting them out of business. According to Mandelson: “The agri-businessmen of Brazil, the manufacturers of China and the software engineers of India define global competitiveness. They are the benchmark for every global trading business in Europe and America that still wants to be a business in 20 years.” So much for Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy.
Who’d be a farmer now in the EU, with the British Labour party’s “Prince of Darkness” and spin doctor supreme apparently deciding your fate.
