Lord Bruce of Doningtonasked Her Majesty's Government:
What subsidies are currently paid by member states of the European Community to:
and what action they propose to abolish such subsidies.
- (a) producers of cut flowers, for fuel costs;
- (b) coal exporters;
- (c) internal railway systems;
- (d) export credit insurance;
The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Hesketh): The information is as follows:
(a) The EC Commission has responsibility under Articles 92–94 of the Treaty of Rome for ensuring that aids paid by member states are compatible with the European Community and do not lead to distortions of trade.
No subsidies are paid by the United Kingdom to producers of cut flowers to cover fuel costs.
(b) Details of subsidies paid by member states to their coal industries are set out in EC Document 4024/91. Unfortunately, it is not possible to determine percentages of aids which go specifically to exports.
Aids granted by member states under the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) Treaty (the Treaty of Paris) are recognised as incompatible with the common market for coal and steel unless achieving one of the objectives set out in EC Decision 2064/86, which are: improvement of competitivity of 25WA the coal industry; creating new capacities or solving the social and regional problems related to developments in the coal industry.
The Commission has recently invited member states to present plans for a decreasing scale of aids, a request which is primarily aimed at Germany and Spain.
(c) Details of the subsidies paid by member states to European Community railways are given in the Commission reports on the transposed annual accounts of railways undertakings. The 1986 accounts were submitted to Parliament on 30th September 1989 (Document 8174/89) and the 1987 accounts have been submitted today.
(d) All official export credit insurance agencies within the EC are required by GATT to operate on a non-subsidised basis. However, the Government are of the view that under some official export credit insurance schemes, premium is not charged at economic levels and therefore they have mounted an initiative in both the EC and the OECD which seeks to eliminate such subsidies.