§ Mr. HagueTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the outcome of the Agriculture Council held on 27 to 28 January.
§ Mr. GummerI represented the United Kingdom at this meeting of the Council together with the Parliamentary Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry).
The Presidency presented a working document, cast in very broad terms, seeking to identify areas of agreement on the reform of the common agricultural policy in order to take the discussions forward. I made it clear that it would not be possible for the United Kingdom nor, I believed for any member state, to take a definitive view on CAP reform until they knew the outcome of the GATT negotiations. I also expressed doubts whether the working document in practice took matters any further forward. Discussions will now resume at the next meeting of the Council on 10 to 11 February.
The Council also discussed the position on GATT. I argued that the Community's response to the Dunkel paper on GATT should be based on the expectation of securing eventual agreement. The Community should concentrate on ensuring the coherence of the proposals in the three main areas of reductions in domestic support, market access and export subsidies, and explore the difficulties that the text poses because of the proposed commitments on volume reductions in subsidised exports and the absence of proposals for charges on certain cereal derivatives. I suggested that the Commission should pay much less attention to the possibility of securing a wider "green box" of permitted subsidies. These views received considerable support. The Commissioner said he would take member states' views into account in the continuing discussions in Geneva.
The Council agreed in principle on a measure specifying the rules for meat products that will apply in the single market. This is a useful step forward.
The French Minister questioned how the Commission intended responding to the proposal in the draft GATT text that import controls on bananas should be converted into a tariff. I emphasised the importance of this question for certain ACP banana producers with which the United Kingdom has traditional links. The Commission said they were examining the position.