NOTHING is agreed until everything is agreed. The mantra of the EU budget talks was on everyone's minds.
Despite the clear relief of ministers and officials early yesterday morning at the brokering of the complex and far-reaching Agenda 2000 farm deal, there were still niggling doubts.
The French were the least optimistic. "For me the work remains unfinished. There is a risk that the accord will founder on the financial aspects," their Farm Minister, Mr Jean Glavany, warned. The problem is not so much the danger of the unravelling of the detail of the package, whether on price cuts or the compensation on offer, but that in reaching an agreement the ministers significantly overshot the budget ceiling aspired to by most finance ministers.
The German Farm Minister, Mr Karl-Heinz Funke, who presided over the meeting, told a press conference that the deal was "around 2 per cent above the budget limits but we have nonetheless hit the nail on the head".
The final compromise package comes in at about €314 billion for the seven years of the budget. That is €1 billion more than the total proposed in the Commission's original plan, but €7billion more than the "stabilisation" budget model favoured by many member-states. In effect, it means the freezing in real terms of 1999 CAP spending of €40.5 billion.
The choice left for finance ministers when they meet on Monday, and for the heads of government in Berlin in two weeks' time, is whether to accept the overshoot and pay up, perhaps at the expense of structural funding, or to recoup some or all of the difference from the farm budget.
Enter "degressivity", the French proposal to cut direct aid payments annually, which could in a matter of a couple of years wipe out the net gains to Irish beef producers so proudly vaunted by the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh.
Not surprisingly, the Irish are adamant that the deal must stand as it is. They take comfort from what they see as Mr Funke's and the presidency's equanimity in the face of the overspend. "We never signed up to 40.5," Mr Walsh insists.
The French, British, Swedes and Danes are less sanguine about the deal and have put down markers that they intend to press for a clawback.
Yet the squabble should not overshadow the magnitude of the deal, described yesterday by a grey-faced Farm Commissioner, Mr Franz Fischler, as the biggest reform of the Common Agricultural Policy in its near 40-year history.
The Commission did not get all it wanted, but the basis of fundamental reform, in the mould of the MacSharry 1992 package, is intact. Difficulties in reconciling reform with budget requirements were resolved simply by delaying reform rather than calling it into question.
Crucially, guaranteed price cuts of 15 per cent in milk and 20 per cent in cereals, although delayed, will open up the prospect of unfettered trade on the world market for the EU's looming surpluses instead of the reopening of massive intervention stores.
A cut of only 20 per cent in the beef price, rather than the 30 per cent proposed by the Commission, is more problematic. The next round of world trade talks opens in the autumn and the EU's trading partners will be gunning for the export refunds on which Irish producers are so dependent.
The Commission was yesterday putting a brave face on its ability to negotiate the right for some level of continued subsidised beef exports, but the British were less confident. "It's possible we'll have to return to these issues before 2006," the Secretary of State for Agriculture, Mr Nick Brown, warned. Not a prospect Irish farmers will welcome.
On balance they have done well, however, a reality reflected in the genuinely warm greetings for Mr Walsh when he emerged from yesterday's talks. His standing in the farm community will certainly be enhanced by the deal, although he was quick and generous in his tributes to his officials.
Both the Irish Farmers' Association and the Department of Agriculture costed the sectoral outcome of the deal at the same level - a net gain in compensation for price cuts of £50 million for beef producers, and losses of £30 million to dairy producers and £20 million to the cereal sector.
That represents a roughly unchanged scenario for farmers if market prices do fall to their guarantee level, a far cry from the feared £226 million reduction farmers were threatened with in the original proposals. If prices do not fall that far, as both the Minister and the Commission expect, then the position of Irish farmers is even rosier.
Nevertheless, there are still storm clouds ahead. The deal contains an aspiration - no more than that, says Mr Walsh - to abolish milk quotas altogether from 2006. That prospect is nevertheless quite likely as the liberalisers, led by the British, have the votes to block any subsequent renewal.
The beef price cut is certainly more to its taste than that proposed by the Commission, but the IFA warns that the prospects of a squeeze on exports means there is still a danger of a glut on the European market. It has argued for stiffer supply controls. The maintenance of Irish quotas for premiums is also of importance.
IFA concerns at the rock bottom price set for emergency intervention are dismissed by Mr Walsh as reflecting an unhealthy "fixation" with intervention. "As we head into a new century that is no way to build the credibility of the industry," he insists. "We should look to the market and we have every opportunity of doing so now."
Although they are pleased to have slowed it down a bit, the direction of reform is also of concern to the farming organisations. It continues the decoupling of farm incomes from the sale of their produce by transferring resources from price support to direct aid payments. An estimated 80 per cent of the CAP budget, following this reform, will be taken up with such direct aid, the traditional cheque in the post.
Most farmers would prefer to earn their living from their produce and will feel vulnerable to the longer-term political threat to an income support system that is all too easily compared to welfare.
As for the consumers, the Commission predicts that the effect of the full reform on the consumer price index will be of the order of 1 per cent or about £1.50 a week to the average family providing the retailers and factories pass on the price cut.