L'unione europea si e' dichiarata disposta ad eliminare i ridicoli sussidi agricoli (oltre 41 MILIARDI DI EURO ALL'ANNO)!!! E gli USA si dichiarano disposti a seguire!!!
Breve lezione d'economia: questi sussidi, che permettono a certi agricoltori di paesi ricchi di vivere da nababbi, riducono i prezzi globali di prodotti agricoli togliendo opportunita' di crescita ad agricoltori di paesi poveri.
Speriamo bene!
L'articolo, da www.cnn.com
EU set to scrap farm export aid
Monday, May 10, 2004 Posted: 74 AM EDT (1154 GMT)
KILLARNEY, Ireland (Reuters) -- The European Union is ready to eliminate its lavish subsidies on farm exports to galvanize sluggish world trade talks provided its main partners do the same, EU trade chief Pascal Lamy said on Monday.
Details of the proposed move, long demanded by critics of its generous farm subsidies, have been sent to members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) just days before ministers from several WTO states hold a potentially crucial meeting in Paris.
"We feel that a breakthrough is possible and the EU is ready to do its part," Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler said. "All our export subsidies are effectively on the table."
The EU spends about 43 billion euros a year on its farm policy, nearly half of its entire annual budget. By far the largest proportion of this goes to France. The EU has faced mounting pressure to abolish its export subsidies.
Lamy said the offer depended on the EU's WTO partners matching the move, which the United States has indicated it is willing to do. It also required progress in the two other key areas of the negotiations, domestic farm aids and market access.
"If an acceptable offer emerges on market access and domestic support, we would be ready to move on export subsidies," Lamy said in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.
Up to now, European unwillingness to eliminate these subsidies by a set date has been a major obstacle to reaching a deal on agriculture, widely viewed as the key to unlocking the WTO's troubled Doha Round of trade liberalization talks.
Fischler said the EU was offering concessions on new trade issues, known as the Singapore issues, special treatment for the weaker developing countries and on agriculture.
"This means that our international partners have to make clear that they are ready to fully match the EU on their forms of export support such as export credits, abuse of food aid or state trading enterprise," he told reporters at a meeting of the EU's 25 farm ministers in the Irish city of Killarney.
Stalled trade talks
The round, whose successful conclusion economists say would give a huge long-term boost to world growth, was supposed to have been wrapped up by the end of this year.
That deadline is certain to be missed and in its place negotiators want to reach outline deals, or frameworks in WTO parlance, in the main areas by the end of July.
Diplomats from EU trade partners welcomed the EU's offer but said it would have only a limited impact because it was simply a public announcement of something the bloc had long ago been signaling in private.
"Of course it is good news but I do not see it making an awful lot of difference," said one Geneva diplomat from a leading developing country.
The bloc insists it has already made massive strides in reducing the worst of its trade-distorting farm support -- market price guarantees and export subsidies -- in two reforms in 1992 and 1999 and also in major changes agreed last June.
On market access, Lamy said the EU was sticking to its guns for a "blended" formula, which would allow the 25-nation bloc and countries like Japan with expensive domestic farm industries to keep high tariffs on some politically sensitive goods.
But the G20 group of developing countries, led by Brazil, India and China, has rejected this as it says it would asks too much of developing nations and too little of richer states.
The market access formula for how much states will open markets to others' goods will be at the center of talks in Paris at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which start Wednesday when technical experts meet.
About 28 trade ministers, including Lamy and U.S. trade chief Robert Zoellick, will meet on Thursday over dinner and on Friday afternoon for what will be the last chance to bring so many ministers together before the July deadline for the frameworks.