Fischler says EU must defend direct subsidy to farmers

A key challenge of the next round of world trade talks will be the defence of the right of the EU to make direct income payments to farmers, the Austrian Commissioner for Agriculture, Mr Franz Fischler, warned confirmation hearings in the European Parliament.

Mr Fischler, who is one of four returning commissioners but the only one to keep his previous job (while also netting Fisheries), strongly defended his CAP reform programme during his three-hour session yesterday, insisting to one MEP that the survival of the family farm was central to it.

Mr Fischler dealt confidently with a portfolio and an audience that he knew well - others are unlikely to fare as well.

He offered no hostages to fortune when asked if he would resign at the request of a simple majority of MEPs - Mr Fischler reiterated the line that we will hear all week, he has put his job at the disposal of the Commission President-designate, Mr Romano Prodi.

He acknowledged job losses in farming but pointed out that EU success was based on the sale of value-added products, unlike the US, which sold raw commodities.

Farm policy had to balance the social dimension with the need to be competitive. Jobs, he said, would be created through strengthening the food-processing sector and he put a particular emphasis on the expansion of rural development policy.

On food safety Mr Fischler said it had to be a "prime concern". "If consumers can't have confidence in food, then tinkering around with the markets becomes a waste of time." He pledged to co-operate intensively with the Irish Commissioner for Food Safety and Consumers, Mr David Byrne.

He defended Commission subsidies to tobacco farmers, pointing out that ending tobacco production in Europe would not cut smoking. The result would simply be more imports.

Earlier one of the Spanish commissioners-designate, Ms Loyola de Palacio, came under fire from MEPs over a major fraud in Spain against EU subsidies on flax.

Ms de Palacio, a conservative who will be responsible for relations with the Parliament, Industry and Transport, was Spanish agriculture minister at the time although she insisted that a parliamentary inquiry had cleared her of political responsibility for the scandal.

She insisted that she would accept political responsibility were her directorates implicated in gross mismanagement and would resign.

The assurances were not enough for the Socialists, who said after the hearing that while they could live with her attitudes to transport and relations with the Parliament, they were not satisfied with her willingness to accept real political responsibility.

The leader of the British Labour group, Mr Alan Donnelly, said he would be writing to Mr Prodi to say he would not favour Ms de Palacio's appointment because of her "arrogance" and refusal to accept responsibility.