asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs if he will accept that, rather than selling off butter and grain mountains to the Russians at an enormously reduced rate, it would be more in the interest of equity that such surpluses should be made available to the Third World: and if he will endeavour to promote this point of view.
Written Answers. - Third World Aid.
519.
The position regarding the sales of surplus EC butter and grain to the USSR is that there have been no sales of grain in recent years to the USSR at subsidised prices from intervention stocks and that no such sales are under consideration. There have been sales of butter from intervention stocks at subsidised prices. However, this product is not suitable for use for practical reasons as food aid to developing countries.
As regards food aid, the Community will this year provide more than a million tonnes of cereals and more than a hundred thousand tonnes of milk powder as well as smaller amounts of other suitable products as food aid to developing countries. The cost of this to the Community's development aid funds is some five hundred million European Currency Units. In fact, the Community is one of the main providers of food aid to developing countries. It provides, in addition, financial assistance for other forms of emergency help such as improvements to the transport system for distributing food aid within developing countries. Of course, all this is in addition to actions undertaken directly by member states individually.
The House will also be aware that at the urging of the Irish Presidency the European Council meeting in Dublin on 3 and 4 December 1984 agreed that food aid from the Community and its member states to the famine-stricken areas of Africa should be significantly stepped up by the provision of 1.2 million tonnes of cereals between now and late 1985 when the next harvest is due.