[A-List] EU trade policy: UK stance

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

While Chirac and Schröder appear to be recoiling from US militarism and the
servile position of Britain in this matter, in their joint efforts to create
a more independent EU defence stance (as opposed to British ambivalence
here), their compromise deal on farm subsidies threatens another flank of
the EU competitive strategy against the US: namely, ensuring WTO primacy in
the governance of international trade, rather than overt US hegemony. Again,
Mark is right to point out just how slippery and treacherous Tony is being
with regard to Dubya:

"The Bushies
are already amazed, disillusioned and fed up that yelling doesn't work,
threatening nukes doesn't work, holding a gun to British and German heads
doesn't work, that Tony Blair is actually good ole Perfidious Albion reborn,
tricky, duplicitous and devious and by far his worst enemy, the one who is
inside the tent pissing on the canteen, the real speedbump on the road to
war which is what the Brits have become-- a sleeping secret policeman in
cahoots with Chirac and Putin and desperate to block Bush."

See http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/2002-October/021302.html


Britain warns on EU farm costs
By Scheherazade Daneshkhu in London
Financial Times; Nov 06, 2002

Failure to reform the European common agricultural policy would mean the end
of the Doha agreement to open up world trade to less developed countries,
Clare Short, Britain's international development secretary, warned
yesterday.

"If the EU isn't willing to reform the CAP, the EU will throw away Doha and
that would be a terrible responsibility. We must reform the common
agricultural policy to fulfil the Doha commitments," Ms Short told a
committee of members of parliament.

Her comments came a week after Tony Blair, prime minister, and Jacques
Chirac, president of France, argued angrily over the future of farm
subsidies at an EU summit.

But Ms Short said it would be wrong to "gang up" on France, which is a net
recipient of EU aid. "We musn't allow France's problems to throw Doha away
but we musn't gang up on France either," she said.

She called on European Union leaders to press ahead with proposals to scale
back direct aid for farmers under the CAP in a planned interim review in
2006. The ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation in Cancun,
Mexico, in September next year would be crucial to keeping to the
development agenda agreed at Doha. The WTO meeting in Doha, Qatar, last
November set a framework for measures to lift barriers blocking poor
countries' access to world markets, including the scrapping of tariffs and
subsidies.

Ms Short, who was answering questions on the autumn meetings of the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, criticised the selection
procedure of the heads of the two international bodies as an "outrage" and
"disgraceful" for its alleged lack of transparency. It was a "political fix"
and a "carve-up" lingering from the days of Bretton Woods, when the two
institutions were created as part of a new world financial order.