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European Council - 28 October 2002

Mr. David Curry (Skipton and Ripon): The Prime Minister is right to welcome enlargement and to talk about the importance of the world trade round, but on agriculture reform, he has clearly taken his eye off the ball. Does he not recall that on 23 September the Financial Times carried a letter from six EU farm Ministers entitled XThe CAP is something we can be proud of", and that as France, Italy and Spain were all signatories, there is a clear blocking minority?

Is the Prime Minister further aware that on 3 October the Financial Times had on its front page a story headed "Berlin and Paris close to deal on farm reform"? What have the Government been doing in the meantime? Why did the Prime Minister's great friend Herr Schröder, whom the right hon. Gentleman is supposed to have rescued from election defeat, team up with the French and apparently defeat his own interests? Faced with that coalition, how can the Prime Minister believe that the mid-term review of agriculture reform is still on track?

The Prime Minister: I shall tell the right hon. Gentleman precisely why—for the very reasons that the European Commissioner Franz Fischler gave today, when he said:

"the fundamental issues and the aims that we addressed in the MTR remain unchanged . . . The underlying question is: Is there an urgency to arrive at a decision on the future common agricultural policy . . .?' My answer to this is clear. We must seize the opportunity to build a strong and sustainable CAP before it is too late."

That is what he said today.

The point that I am trying to make to the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues is that one part of the French-German agreement, the limit on CAP expenditure after 2006, is an advance on what existed before the summit. Before the summit, there was no such agreement. If we had simply had the European Commission proposals, there would have been no limit on agriculture spending after 2006; now there is.

What was unacceptable was the idea that in return for that, we should abandon CAP reform in the Agriculture Council and the mid-term review. As Franz Fischler has just stipulated and as was agreed at the summit, that mid-term review continues, so the way is open for agricultural reform. Of course there will be attempts by countries to get together a blocking minority; that is the same as it was before the summit—but the important thing is that, as a result of the decision of the Council summit, there is no way that the matter can now be taken off the agenda.

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David Curry MP | House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA | tel: 020 7219 6202