NFU officials say they will be following develop-ments "minute-by-minute" at this month's European Agricultural Council when crucial decisions on Common Agricultural Policy reform are expected to be made.
Key issues for the NFU include decoupling subsidy from production to whole farm payments and changes to the CAP budget to pay for rural development and other reforms.
The CAP reforms outlined in January this year involve a shift away from production-based support payments to "decoupled payments" that will be less "market distorting" according the EC officials.
But NFU Ben Gill will travel to Luxembourg for the meetings on June 11 and 12 amid growing fears that ministers may be forced to compromise with decoupling introduced sector by sector, perhaps starting with arable before moving onto beef, sheep and dairy. There are also suggestions that complete decoupling may be watered-down, leaving farms with some decoupled payments and some production payments. Mr Gill said the NFU was in favour of full decoupling and warned that such compromises would create new problems and leave farmers with none of the benefits decoupling could bring. He said: "The devil is in the detail and we need to get this right."
June 5, 2003 15:00
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