EU budget talks

[The Monkey]

I'm suprised there isn't a thread about this already...

Anyway, the deal is that European leaders are trying to settle a budget for the period of 2007-2013. 40% of the budget goes to farmers at the moments. France is the country that gains most on this, so naturally they don't want to change that. The UK, as many other countries, wants more money to reseach and less to farming. However, the UK got a huge rebate on their member fee, a remain from Thatcher's time. That is something that France now hold against them when they try to pussade France to drop the allowance for French farmers. It looks like it's a dead lock.

Here's the latest development: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4534058.stm

Your thoughts?

 

[$kelet0r]

agriculture ****s everything up - we need it but the price is just so high for what we get in return
being pro competition i would be in favour of competition in agriculure and end all subsidies - the eu farming technology means it doesnt have to worry about low labour costs in non eu nations as it has the edge in every other area

 

[SAJ]

Im not suprised theres not been a thread on this before, I doubt that even half the people voting/negotiating on it understand more than half of it.

Monbiot had an interesting article this week that touched on it

Felicity Lawrence used the Freedom of Information Act to discover who has been receiving the European Union’s farm subsidies(2). The biggest beneficiaries, she found, were not farmers but food manufacturers. In 2003 and 2004, the sugar company Tate and Lyle was given £227m of taxpayers’ money. Nestle was paid by you and me to export milk............
...............Gate Gourmet, the airline catering company, took half a million pounds from us for the little sachets of milk and sugar it puts on passengers’ food trays: because they leave British airspace, they qualify for export subsidies. KLM received a farm subsidy for “rural restructuring”: turning part of the Dutch countryside into a runway.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/13/the-corporate-begging-bowl/

 

[ComradeBadger]

France still has a peasant underclass, it's the last country that does.