26 giugno 2003

CAFOD slams CAP reform for failing the Third World

The Catholic aid agency CAFOD says a new European Union deal on farm subsidies does not contain the necessary reforms to stop the dumping of cheap EU goods on developing countries.

European Union Farm Ministers say the package will cut the enormous subsidies the EU pays its farmers.

But CAFOD says the final proposals are lame efforts that will do little to end the damage EU subsidies do by undermining third world farmers.

The total CAP budget of £30 billion (43bn euro) will remain in place until 2013 – that is a further decade of more subsidies. The largest farmers will continue to be given very large amounts of money and the basic shape of the CAP will remain grossly damaging to development.

CAFOD Trade Policy Analyst Duncan Green says, “The EU is massaging the figures to make it look good for the upcoming WTO Summit in Cancun this September. But this agreement is a bad deal for the world’s poor. 
Dumping will go on. It beggars belief that the EU can continue to pump £30 billion a year and it will not lead to dumping. It’s an outrage.

The EU’s support for dairy farmers amounts to around £11 billion per year, which works out as about £1.40 per day for each cow. Put another way, the average EU cow now receives more than the income of half the 
world’s population.

The central plank of the EU farm deal is a measure aimed at breaking the link between subsidies and production, referred to as "decoupling". But Duncan Green says, “This may seem radical in Brussels but for developing countries it is dumping as usual.”

Please contact CAFOD’s Patrick Nicholson at 
CAFOD on 0207 326 5559, 07979 781015 
or pnicholson@cafod.org.uk