Germany blocks subsidy agreement and wins on coal subsidies for herself
Germany is blocking an agreement on the agricultural subsidies which will be paid to new EU member states. It refuses to sign any accord before the general election in Germany on 21st September. Since the Spanish presidency is determined to have a positive outcome at the Seville summit in June, this means that the question might be kicked into touch until December, a date by which negotiations on accession were supposed to be finished. This means - as the Digest has never tired of pointing out - that none of the really big issues connected with enlargement, and especially not agriculture, have been properly addressed.
The candidate countries are pushing for levels of agricultural subsidy equal to those given to current member states. They have spent the last decade integrating into their legal systems the 80,000 pages or so of expensive European legislation and they now argue that agricultural subsidies are as much a part of the indivisible acquis communautaire as those laws. The Commission responded to their demand for 100% of the subsidies by offering 25% on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. But Germany is blocking any shift in the Commission's position because, as the biggest net contributor to the budget, it does not want to have to fork out any more payments. Germany is instead insisting that the CAP, and especially the system of direct aids, be ,,reformed", which is supposed to happen next year. France, for her part, wants the system of direct aids to continue for another 10 years - a system out of which her own farmers do so well. Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister, has said that he thinks that direct aids do form part of the acquis.
When it comes to paying themselves subsidies, however, the German position is completely the opposite. Germany has just obtained agreement from the European Commission to carry on showering her miners with money until 2010. The level of subsidy is theoretically supposed to go downwards as that date approaches but, since the Commission has decided to create a ,,committee"in 2006 to study the question of whether they have or not - the classic bureaucratic way of burying an issue - all the signs are that these subsidies will go on forever. This deal was the result of some negotiation or other with France over an entirely unrelated matter: this is the reality of the supposed wonders of inter-governmental co-operation on which the EU is so proudly based: pork, pork and pork.
European Foundation Intelligence Digest Issue No. 144 June 2002