EC Considers new Proposals to end Farm Deadlock

The European Community (EC) executive Commission will today urgently consider whether to take a new initiative to break the current deadlock over reform of the bloc’s farm policy and to ease its budgetary crisis.

The Commission will meet in Strasbourg following what diplomats described as a largely fruitless special joint meeting of farm and finance ministers on the issue in Luxembourg Monday.

Commission officials said farm commissioner Frans Andriessen will ask the 17-man body for permission to present farm ministers with a compromise plan revising proposals for 1987/88 farm prices which have divided them since they were first announced in March.

The most controversial aspects of these proposals are a plan to tax all vegetable and marine oils and fats to finance rapidly increasing production subsidies and technical measures which would change the way common EC farm prices are converted into member state currencies.

West German delegation sources, who have opposed both plans fiercely, said if the Commission dropped the oils and fats tax plan and modified the currency proposals, there would be a chance of agreement on other aspects of the package.

These include measures to cut the effective price paid to farmers for cereals and some other crops by over 10 pct.

But a Commission spokesman said any new proposals would include plans for revising the current oils and fats and currency regulations.

The Commission is anxious to avoid a complete deadlock in meetings of EC farm ministers here this week as it fears issues could then be referred to the EC heads of government summit at the end of the month.

Commission president Jacques Delors, who wants to ensure the summit has ample time to consider proposals for new means of financing the cash-strapped EC, said yesterday it would be “disastrous” if farm issues had to be discussed by government leaders.

However, with a five billion European Currency Unit (5.75 billion dollar) EC budget deficit almost inevitable this year, the Commission will be wary of making major concessions to the traditionally free-spending farm ministers, diplomats said

Belgian finance minister Mark Eyskens, who chaired yesterday’s joint meeting of ministers, said afterwards some aspects of the farm price package will almost certainly have to be referred to the summit.

Although Delors’ aides described the joint meeting as useful in clarifying the issues, some diplomats said it seemed to have merely confirmed member states’ long held positions.

Indeed, they said an extra state, Spain, seemed to have lined up with the four others already opposing the oils and fats tax, West Germany, Britain, Denmark and Portugal.