CAP is failing small farmers in Europe and in poorest countries

**Oxfam urges EU to agree CAP overhaul on eve of WTO**



The EU must agree to an overhaul of the Common Agricultural Policy in 2008 as part of any budget deal at this week’s Heads of State Summit meeting if it is to save small farmers in Europe and in the developing world from another decade of misery.

Oxfam is urging EU member states not to sell out small farmers in Europe and the developing world by agreeing a new EU budget without a concrete guarantee for a full-scale overhaul of the CAP at the earliest opportunity – 2008.

Oxfam’s Julia Tilford said: “It’s time people took off their rose-tinted glasses and saw the current CAP regime for what it is – a grossly unfair, unsustainable system which helps the rich get richer quicker while small farmers in the developing world and Europe grow poorer.

Figures from 2003 show that:

• poor farmers in France, the strongest defender of the current regime, receive just 10% of CAP subsidies while 50% of their small farmers have disappeared over the past 20 years.

• In the UK farmers in the economically depressed Peak District have seen their incomes halve over the past decade falling to an average of £7,500. An elite three per cent of landowners gobble up one fifth of total CAP payments to the UK.

• Spain, the top 18% of big farmers receive 76% of all subsidies and 37,000 family run farms disappear each year in Spain.

Julia Tilford added: “There is a common misconception that the CAP is some sort of benevolent fund for small struggling farmers. In reality it’s a pernicous regime that lines the pockets of the wealthiest farmers and processors while doing enormous harm to developing countries as a result of encouraging dumping. “

On the eve of the WTO talks in Hong Kong, the EU’s failure to offer real cuts to farm subsidies that encourage dumping and tariffs has been a major sticking point of the Doha Development Round negotiations.

Julia Tilford added: “Offers on the table by both the EU and US fall far short of what is needed to move these talks forward but the EU could break the impasse by committing to a root and branch reform of the CAP. Failure do so sends very bad message to negotiators in Hong Kong and could result in the EU being blamed for potential failure of Doha talks in Hong Kong”

Oxfam last month published a report that revealed the EU pays $4.2 billion in subsidies which are illegal under WTO rules.

In other revelations, Oxfam has found:

• 78% of the 5.2 million beneficiaries of CAP receive less that 5,000 euro a year
• 1.8% of recipients receive some 500,000 euros or above

Julia Tilford added: “Without a move on the CAP there is unlikely to be any step forward on trade talks in Hong Kong. The EU should commit to shake-up the CAP to put an end to export dumping and grant more markets access to poor country exports.”