The East African - European preferential access among the best - by Peter Mandelson

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European preferential access among the best - by Peter Mandelson

Few criticisms of the European Union have quite as much media currency as the caricature of a continent of coddled farmers and sky-high farm tariffs. Europe’s reputation for agricultural protectionism may have been deserved two decades ago, but it is time that the caricature caught up with the facts.

Europe is the world’s biggest importer of agricultural produce from the developing world. It takes almost all of Africa’s agricultural exports and almost half of Latin America’s. Under the EU preferential access schemes, most of these goods enter the European Union completely free of any duty or quota. No other developed country extends the same openness to agricultural exports from the developing world.

Close watchers of the Doha negotiation will have noted that it is not poor countries that are pushing for steeper cuts to Europe’s agricultural tariffs – most of these countries already pay nothing at all – but highly competitive agricultural exporters like Brazil, the US and Australia. Preferential access is in some cases the only thing that allows poorer African countries to compete in Europe’s huge market with competitive global farm exporters like Australia and Brazil. As Europe cuts its tariffs, these countries will need help and time to adjust – and it can’t happen overnight. NOR IS Europe’s much-maligned Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) itself the problem. Europe uses this policy to support farmers as the custodians of its rural societies and environment.