Farm Subsidies Top EU Austerity Budget

Farm subsidies will continue to gobble up the biggest share of the European Union’s budget to 2020, despite a 13 per cent drop in future agricultural spending, under a deal struck by EU leaders on Friday, Reuters reported.

Agriculture’s budget supremacy was secured after France and other major farming nations thwarted attempts by Britain and its northern European allies to shift a greater share of EU spending towards new measures to boost growth and jobs. As a result, farm subsidies will consume some 38 per cent of the EU budget for 2014-2020, equivalent to 363 billion euros ($485.7 billion) of the 960 billion total, or around 50 billion euros a year.

That is still a significant reduction compared with the 417 billion euros earmarked for farming under the current seven-year budget, but supporters of the bloc’s 50-year-old common agricultural policy will reflect that the result could have been a lot worse.

French President Francois Hollande was quick to claim victory in the negotiations, saying that France had managed to maintain its farm subsidies while other nations saw theirs cut. “The relative share of agricultural spending in the European budget will decrease, but I made sure to preserve the funding destined for our farmers,” he told a news conference at the end of the 24-hour talks.

The EU’s farm commissioner, Romanian Dacian Ciolos, said the deal confirmed the importance of Europe’s farm policy for the 50 per cent of EU citizens that live in rural areas.