Boost for Ireland in fight to keep €1.6bn fund

Ireland won a small victory in its fight to retain as much as possible of it’s €1.6 billion a year from the EU’s common agriculture fund as negotiations on the Union’s seven-year €1 trillion budget got underway.

A number of countries including Britain, Netherlands and Sweden that contribute more to the EU’s budget than they receive, were still sticking to red lines, insisting the amount of money to run common EU policies be cut well below the sums spent over the past few years.

The 27 leaders were sent home last night with a new set of proposals that they and their experts will consider overnight before meeting today at noon where they are expected, in the words of Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore, to “get down and dirty”.

Having had individual sessions with each of the leaders during the day, EU Council president Herman Van Rompuy came up with new figures, but left the overall budget at €972bn.

But there was a tiny piece of good news for Taoiseach Enda Kenny who described keeping funds for agriculture as “a fundamental issue for Ireland” since 85% of the money from the EU comes from the CAP.

The latest compromise proposal increased spending on CAP by €8bn — mostly for direct payments — to the €372bn already on the table. Funds for regional development and the European Social Fund also got a boost of €10.6bn, having been cut from the European Commission’s original sum.

But French President Francois Hollande — who is firmly on the same side as Ireland on CAP — said the addition was not enough and he would be fighting for more. The policy lost €25bn from what the Commission proposed as being necessary for the sector.

Areas designed to generate growth and jobs were hit with a cut of €13bn bringing to €110bn the sum for Research & Development of which Máire Geoghegan-Quinn is in charge, education and skills provision and Erasmus, that helps fund third-level students spending a year studying abroad.

It also includes infrastructure policies designed to better connect Europe’s transport, energy and internet services which experts say would create more jobs and growth — an area Britain insisted should be cut as it had got a huge increase in the Commission’s original proposal.

It remains to be seen if Mr Van Rompuy’s discussions and compromises shorten what is traditionally a long and tortuous event for EU leaders. Ireland has made common cause with France on the massive agriculture budget — the only EU policy that is entirely funded by the Union rather than nationally.

Mr Kenny’s argument with Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands and others that want to see farm funding cut is that they are underestimating the potential for their economies and for jobs from the agriculture sector.