EU has PR job to do on farm reform - Sutherland

The EU has failed to convince its counterparts in the WTO that anything has really changed for farmers in Europe, Peter Sutherland, the former director-general of the WTO said last night.

Delivering the Michael Dillon Memorial Lecture in Dublin, the former EU commissioner said the EU had a communications job to do in selling the recent reforms. "For the rest of the world, EU agriculture continues to be a non-competitive, economic dinosaur hiding behind high tariff walls and propped up by limitless sacks of taxpayers' money," said Mr Sutherland. "But the reality is quite different.

"The EU has a communications job to do. If the nub of the issue in the current WTO negotiations is that Europe cannot go through a painful and profound reform of the Cap [ Common Agricultural Policy] - for the third time in 15 years - integrate 10 new members and tear down its tariffs protecting farmers from the full might of international competition, then we will need to do better in convincing the rest of the world why not," he said.

He said the notion that European farm exports unfairly flood the world market was simply wrong. Recent WTO figures show that Europe's share of world markets in milk products and meat had fallen significantly during the past 15 years. At the same time, the shares of some of the EU's critics, such as the US, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand, had risen dramatically.

"Many farmers in the developing countries and especially in the competitive exporting nations are having a tough time. But this single-minded obsessive portrayal of the EU as the ultimate villain is simply wrong," he said.

However, he stressed that the EU still had work to do in reforming its agricultural policies. He quoted recent figures showing that 1 per cent of the richest farmers in the EU get more subsidies than 40 per cent of the poorest.

He said this added to the case that further reforms were required and these might facilitate a move towards a solution of the current WTO talks.

The former commissioner also said the majority of EU consumers were willing to pay the price for supporting food production in rural Europe.

He said that in many, if not all EU member-states, people did not resent what was being spent by the EU on farmers.

"If there is a price to be paid for maintaining rural communities, maintaining the countryside and having good local products in the shops, then taxpayers and consumers generally appear ready to pay a price - so long as there are also cheaper options available in the shops for the less well off," said Mr Sutherland.

The Michael Dillon Memorial Lecture honours the late Michael Dillon, one of the first full-time agricultural journalists in Ireland. He worked with The Irish Times, RTÉ and the Irish Farmers Journal. Organised by the Guild of Agricultural Journalists of Ireland and sponsored by the Kerry Group, it was attended by leading executives in the food industry and leaders of the farming bodies.