May 28, 2008	Wednesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 22, 1429

BRDO (Slovenia), May 27: Europe’s farm chief outlined her vision for future agricultural policy until 2013 to EU ministers on Tuesday, hinting at some leeway to compromise but also asking countries to be constructive towards reform.

Last week, EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel published a blueprint for changes to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), targeting wealthy farmers by cutting subsidies and channelling the saved cash into rural development schemes.

Speaking to the bloc’s farm ministers in Slovenia, Fischer Boel said she had already toned down her proposals. She indicated there was still some room for manoeuvre in negotiations but said EU governments should not push too hard.

“The current proposal can already be considered as a first compromise. On some issues I personally would have liked to be more ambitious but for the sake of a balanced proposal, I tried to look for the middle ground,” she told the ministers.

“It is also clear that with this approach I have already given away some negotiation space and I hope you will take that into account during our upcoming discussions,” she said.

Her reform plan, called a “health check” of the CAP, would scrap -- or at least curtail -- a string of “old-style” farm support schemes such as safety-net buying of commodity stocks at fixed prices, and subsidies still linked to production volumes.

Initial reactions from ministers were predictable, since EU countries have already been discussing the broad outlines of Fischer Boel’s ideas for some months.

“I think we are on the right track for a successful conclusion in November,” French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier told a news conference after the meeting. “But there is a lot that remains to be done, although progress has been made.” “I have personally felt a willingness to come to a compromise,” said Slovenia’s Agriculture Minister Iztok Jarc.

One of her most controversial suggestions is to trim handouts to large farms by siphoning off cash, via a tiered system of income brackets, into rural development schemes.

That idea has already irked several countries like Britain,Germany and the Czech Republic: all with big landholders.

German Junior Agriculture Minister Gerd Mueller told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday that Germany will seek major changes to the European Commission’s plans, notably attempts to cut direct subsidy payments to large farms.—Reuters