Blair wrong on CAP, says Ahern

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern bluntly told British Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday that he was wrong in his arguments against the Common Agricultural Policy.

As he officially opened Iverk Agricultural Show at Piltown, Co Kilkenny, the Taoiseach said he was annoyed at Mr Blair’s presentation of the issues because it was not factual.

“It is not valid to say that the cost of the CAP absorbs too high an amount of the EU budget and it is an argument made by my good friend and colleague Tony Blair, but I have to say quite frankly he is wrong.”

Mr Ahern said he believes calls for CAP reform are misplaced. They are based on a misunderstanding of its role.

“They are based on a false premise about the relative cost of the CAP. They ignore WTO realities and were they to be acted on, they would involve breaches of existing agreements,” he said. The Taoiseach said the CAP is a truly European policy. To abolish or undermine it would weaken the entire European project when it needed strengthening, not weakening.

He said the truth about the CAP is certainly not simple. Yet simplistic and negative statements about it, many driven by self-interest, are continually being made.

“These have become lodged in the public consciousness largely because those of us who believe in the merits of the CAP have maintained a relative silence on the subject. I would like, therefore, to set out the truth, as I see it, about the CAP,” he said.

Mr Ahern said size is crucial to farm profitability. Europe was - and still is - at a major competitive disadvantage. The average farm size in the EU 15 is only 18 hectares. In the US it is 10 times bigger, at 178 hectares. Canada’s is 422 hectares, Australia’s 3,243 and Brazil has 273,000 farms averaging 916 hectares.

“In this situation, it is abundantly clear that if the EU eliminated, or significantly reduced, support for agriculture, then European farms on the margins of commerciality would go out of business and European agricultural production would fall.

“The food supply gap would be filled by imports from, for example, countries in South America and Australasia which can produce at prices below European levels,” he said, stressing it is his job to stand by the CAP and Irish agriculture.

The Taoiseach said it needs to be kept in mind that the CAP has been the subject of ongoing and broad-based reform for over two decades. The last one was the most fundamental. It is now being implemented by the member states.

“I hold that it is simply not credible to call for reform of a policy the most recent reform of which is only now being implemented,” he said.

Mr Ahern said the reforms had made European agriculture more competitive, better prepared for globalisation, more compliant with food safety requirements, more environmentally sustainable and more conscious of animal welfare requirements.