EU Maintains Agriculture Views

Three and a half months after Seattle, the EU continues to maintain its broad position on trade in agriculture negotiations. At the 19th European Agricultural Outlook Conference in London, Dr. Franz Fischler, EU Agriculture Commissioner, spoke on the future of the CAP, and its relationship to a new round of trade negotiations. Noting that globalisation offers new opportunities because "the vast majority of food manufacturers has [sic] not yet entered the global market place," he cited two preconditions for progress.

The first precondition is that trade liberalisation must occur in the context of a framework for multilateral trade negotiations. He restated the EU's intention to position agriculture within "a broad based agreement, as it will leave all WTO partners more room for manoeuvre in the context of a global package. Since all WTO members seem to agree that trade liberalisation is economically beneficial, it should be clear that a liberalisation of many sectors is more beneficial than that of a few."

The second precondition is to address anti-trust matters on a global scale. This is an interesting linkage between agriculture and competition policy. It may suggest the possibility that the EU is beginning to recognize the potential for private food labeling schemes and other restrictive business practices to impact agricultural market access. This linkage may therefore presage EU proposals on the matter of "harnessing globalisation", which has been widely promoted by Mr. Lamy.

With respect to WTO negotiations, Dr. Fischler said that the EU "has every intention of ensuring that the development of this trade is based on clear, acceptable and sustainable international trade rules." This position remains underwritten by a recognition that, "the general public continues to be concerned, indeed worried, by the impact of globalisation on the environment, health, social standards and cultural diversity. The European model of agriculture based on multifunctional farming addresses these relatively new issues, and thus offers a more future-oriented perspective for agriculture than mechanical calls for a total liberalisation of farm trade."

He also noted that multifunctionality -- which links sustainable agriculture, food safety, territorial balance, environment and food security -- is emerging in US views as expressed by Mr. Glickman, US Secretary of Agriculture. This conceptual convergence between EU and US views acknowledges "agriculture's wider role and responsibility".

It remains to be seen however whether the US approach is merely a tactical stance to deploy the treasury in an effort to demonstrate that multifunctionality will be a prohibitively costly principle for the EU and Japan to maintain in the long run.

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