Liberal lady to lead EU agriculture

By Eric Donald

Mariann Fischer Boel makes history by being the first woman to be EU Agricultural Commissioner. From an Irish and French perspective she will also be seen as one of the most liberal commissioners for agriculture ever, however in her native Denmark some believe that she is not liberal enough.

One of the first tasks facing the incoming Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development (renamed now that fisheries is gone), will be to reform Europe's sugar policy. Being a member of the Danish Liberal party we can expect her to take a very pro-reform approach to this and future policy changes. Traditionally, Denmark has always been in favour of liberalising agricultural policy, most notably as a member of the so called "London club'' (Italy, Denmark, UK and Sweden) which advocated the abolition of milk quotas in the late 1990s.

This was before Mariann Fischer Boel's term as Danish Agriculture Minister, but more recently during the Fischler reforms she adopted a position in favour of dairy support price cuts, in favour of decoupling, in favour of modulation and more worryingly in favour of degressivity (subsequently renamed financial discipline).

Pro dairy price cuts

To get a flavour of her views on the recent reforms, it's worth looking back at the Danish position during those negotiations.

The following are extracts from her speech to the EU Agricultural Council as Danish Minister for Agriculture in January of 2003, when she was reacting to the official mid term review proposals which had just been published.

On the dairy reform proposals: "EU dairy products are losing ground on world markets. We should phase out milk quota as soon as possible. I welcome the higher price cuts and the bringing forward of the starting date, but it is too early to decide on keeping quotas until 2015.''

She went on to welcome the Commission's degressivity proposal (cutting direct payments to fund future reforms), describing it as "better late than never''.

On the decoupling proposal she said: "We need to see a gradual phasing out of direct aids with production more market-orientated. Commission proposal is a big step in the right direction towards a sustainable agriculture. Decoupling would improve the WTO negotiating position. It's Important that we don't create more red tape.''

While her role as Commissioner will be very different from the job she had to do as Danish agricultural minister, she will have enormous influence over the future direction of EU agriculture and rural development policy. Given that Fischler's reforms are so recent, her main focus (aside from sugar) will be on rural development policies. But a 'review' of the Fischler reforms is likely to take place in 2008/09, towards the end of her five-year term as Commissioner, when the possibility of further butter support price cuts, cereal intervention price cuts and a review of decoupling could be expected.

New WTO team

On the world stage, Commissioner Boel along with the UK's Peter Mandelson will be leading the EU negotiating team in the WTO talks. They will be taking over from Franz Fischler and Frenchman Pascal Lamy. There are already fears in the agriculture industry here that this new pairing of Boel/Mandelson will adopt a much more liberal approach to world trade than the Fischler/Lamy pairing. While a framework agreement has been reached in relation to agriculture, all of the detail still remains to be decided, like the time frame for phasing out export subsidies.

Franz Fischler is currently busy trying to complete a deal with the Mercusor region before his term in office is over, which will allow increased imports of beef. Perhaps it would be in Ireland's interest to have this completed before he leaves office. There has been some controversy over the fact that Mariann Fischer Boel's husband owns a farm in Denmark. It's understood that he claims around €60,000 in direct subsidies on the 204-hectare farm. The Commission are currently examining whether there is a conflict of interest between this and Mariann Fischer Boel's appointment as Commissioner for Agriculture.

Charlie McCreevy has secured a strong portfolio where he will have responsibility for the internal market and for financial services. Given the fact that the five big countries, who were losing their second commissioner, were all seeking heavyweight jobs, it's quite an achievement for McCreevy to get the commissionership that he did.

One other interesting appointment in the new commission is the allocation of the environment portfolio to the Greek commissioner Stavros Dimas. He takes over from Sweden's Margot Wallstrom who is now Barrosso's number two. She will be remembered by Irish farmers from when she threatened to cut farmer subsidies for the Government's failure to designate nitrate vulnerable zones.

The Cypriot Markos Kyprianou takes over David Byrne's role as commissioner for health and consumer protection. The 25 new commissioners sit down together for the first time this Friday while their appointments have yet to be ratified by the EU parliament.