Farm commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has reiterated the EU’s commitment to phase out all export subsidies by 2013, but in the meantime has insisted on their use to defend EU market share. Responding to concerns that the dairy export refunds, reintroduced in January, mean ‘dumping’ cheap produce on developing countries, Fischer Boel said that the EU cannot risk losing its market share to other major exporters. [...]

The timing, if not the chicken, is delicious. On the same day (and in the same newspaper!) that German farms minister Horst Seehofer called for the EU to export its standards of environmental, animal welfare and food production regulations to China and India, it has been revealed that member state governments have been covering up the flouting of EU’s rules on cleaning chicken meat with chlorine solution. These rules have kept out all poultry imports from the US for the past eleven years. [...]

Last month the European Union suspended export subsidies for the dairy sector and following the 2005 reforms of sugar subsidies, Europe is set to become a net importer of sugar. It is also imports beef, soya and cereals, mainly from Brazil. Yet a new report (PDF) just issued shows that Europe has consolidated its position as the world’s largest food exporter, ahead of traditional commodity giants the United States and Brazil, and by 2006 it was exporting more by value than it was importing. How can this be? [...]

Small farmers in poor countries are still waiting for a reform of the European agricultural policy that puts an end to dumping. In EU-25, 19% of the beneficiaries received in 2005 around 85% of direct payments. This highly unfair distribution of direct payments is threatening the livelihoods of small farmers in Europe and in poor countries. [...]