Vol. 433 No. 1
62 Mr. Dukes asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry the compensation measures in the Common Agricultural Policy reform package that are now in contention in the GATT discussions; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
One of my priorities in the GATT negotiations is to ensure that the direct compensatory payments to farmers agreed in the Common Agricultural Policy reform package in the beef, cereals and sheep-meat sectors should not be subject to discipline under a final GATT agreement. These payments would have been subject to restriction under the framework agreement put forward by the Director-General of the GATT, Mr. Dunkel in December 1991 and this was, together with other issues, a matter of great concern to me and many of my colleagues in the Council. Accordingly, we mandated the Commission to negotiate improvements to the text.
I was very pleased therefore that the draft deal negotiated between the commission and US negotiators last November provides for the exemption of the Common Agricultural Policy reform compensatory payments from GATT restrictions. There are, of course, other elements of the deal, known as the Blair House agreement, which I have major difficulties with and I am pursuing these matters in the on-going negotiations. The Blair House agreement has still to be accepted by the Council, the US Congress and the other parties in the GATT. This will not arise until an overall agreement covering all sector areas has been finalised. I am confident, however, that whatever agreement finally emerges in the agriculture sector will retain the exemption for Common Agricultural Policy compensatory payments already agreed between the EC and US.
