EU offers more concessions on farm products

The European Union yesterday offered more concessions on farm goods as it tried to keep alive a global trade deal - but the US said the moves fell short and France protested they went too far.

The Commission said it would cut its average farm tariff by 47 per cent, with the highest rates being reduced by 60 per cent.

Peter Mandelson, EU trade commissioner, shrugged off a warning from Jacques Chirac, the French president, and pushed ahead with a more generous offer to open up Europe's farming sector.

Mr Mandelson's calculation appears to be that, with the outright, or at least tacit, support of the EU's other 24 member states and the matchless prize of brokering a Doha trade agreement, he will eventually prevail and persuade Paris to back down. "Our offer today hits the spot and I think it will do the trick," he said.

It is a calculated gamble that could yet backfire. First, France yesterday made clear that Mr Mandelson could not claim full EU support, which he will eventually need because any Doha agreement must be unanimous, and that Mr Chirac's veto warning, made this week during an EU summit at Hampton Court in the UK, would therefore continue to cast a shadow over the Doha talks.

A French diplomat said: "A negotiator can only offer what he can deliver and what the president [ Chirac] said at Hampton Court was perfectly clear. That is the message that the negotiator should pin up in his office and make a genuflexion in front of every morning."

Second, even though Mr Mandelson managed to fine-tune carefully and skilfully his earlier offer to remain within the "outer limit" of his negotiating mandate, that limit still seemed to fall short of the expectations of the EU's main trading partners, starting with the US, which said that that it was "disappointed" by the EU offer.

The US, for example, underlined "the large number of exceptions for so-called sensitive products" in the EU proposal, which could yet weaken considerably the extent to which European farmers will be subject to steep tariff cuts.

Asked what products would benefit from such additional protection, Mariann Fischer Boel, the EU's agriculture commissioner, said: "It is obvious that beef, poultry, sugar and some fruit and vegetables might be in groups that need a sensitive treatment."

In the case of sugar, the difficulties of reforming a sensitive sector of European farming were underlined yesterday by a disagreement between the EU and WTO arbitrators about the deadline for the EU to scrap its subsidised sugar exports next May, following a complaint from Australia, Brazil and Thailand.- (Reuters)