EC FARM MINISTERS END PRICES MEETING STILL DIVIDED
European Community (EC) agriculture
ministers ended a three-day meeting in Luxembourg still deeply
divided over plans by the EC Commission to curb the cost of the
EC's farm policy through sharp cuts in farm returns.
    Their chairman, Belgium's Paul de Keersmaeker, told a news
conference after the meeting he would work on a paper setting
out possible compromise solutions in the next two weeks, with
the hope that the ministers can get down to detailed
negotiations at a meeting in Brussels on May 18.
    But diplomats said the talks this week had served little
more than to clarify member states' positions on the complex
package of measures proposed by the commission.
    The executive body has proposed measures which would result
in price cuts this year for many crops of upwards of 10 pct.
    Other controversial plans include a tax on EC-produced and
imported oilseeds and fats to bring in two billion European
currency units, to help the EC's cash crisis, and changes in
the conversion of EC common farm prices into national
currencies which would inflict extra burdens on West German and
Dutch farmers.
    De Keersmaeker attempted yesterday to narrow differences
between EC states on the oils tax proposal, the currency
measures and the key question of cereals prices and associated
measures.
    But he told journalists, "We have used this meeting to reach
the point at which real negotiations can start at the next
meeting. Ideally they should have started now but our
procedures took much longer than planned."
    Ministers are in theory supposed to agree a price package
by April 1 each year, although this target is seldom reached in
practice.
    Diplomats said on all the points there were widely
diverging views, with Britain and the Netherlands, the
countries most supportive of commission proposals for cereals
price cuts, strongly opposed to the oils tax.
    However, de Keersmaeker said West German objections to the
monetary proposals could prove the most difficult issue to
resolve. "This is a very tough political nut, and because of the
very nature of the problem there is no technical solution," he
said. Commission sources said farm commissioner Frans
Andriessen was prepared to alter some technical aspects of his
proposals to make an agreement easier.
    However, because of the EC's budgetary crisis, he had
little room for concessions to pleas for a cut in the impact of
his proposals on farmers' incomes as several ministers, led by
Germany's Ignaz Kiechle, are demanding.
    EC Commission president Jacques Delors has warned that the
EC will have an accumulated budgetary deficit of over five
billion Ecus by the end of this year, even if the commission
farm price package is adopted in its entirety.
 REUTER
