Category: Blog posts

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Barroso's biofuels poll – update

A couple of week’s ago Berlaymole noted the mysterious disappearance of the online poll about EU biofuels policy from the website of the European Commission President José Manuel Barroso.
The poll had asked respondents the following question:

Should the E.U. stick to its target to reach 10% biofuels by 2020?
– Yes
– No

The results of the poll have never been published and no explanation has been given as to why the poll has been removed. Fear not. We have reinstated the poll on this website, you’ll find it on the sidebar to the left.
Moreover, I’ve written to Barroso’s spokeswoman Leonor Ribeiro Da Silva under the terms of the Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access to documents.… Read the rest

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Manna from heaven? CAP 'spare change' to boost developing country farmers

Surging prices for agricultural commodities means that the EU spends much less on the traditional ‘market measures’ of the CAP such as intervention buying when prices fall below a target price, export subsidies and private storage aid for unsold surpluses. Last year the EU decided to allocate some of this underspend to the Galileo space programme. This year, the proposal is to channel the money to farmers in developing countries who currently suffer from very low productivity.… Read the rest

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Rising food prices and the dangers of imported inflation

When UK Chancellor Alistair Darling wrote to his finance minister colleagues on ECOFIN last month he made the case for reducing agricultural trade barriers and EU farm subsidies as a way of addressing what has become known as the ‘global food crisis’. Quite rightly much of the world’s attention has been focussed on the impact of rising food prices on the world’s poor. But a more motivating factor for the UK could be the fact that higher food prices presents the UK economy with the very serious problem of imported inflation.… Read the rest

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Barroso's disappearing biofuels poll

For the past couple of weeks José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, has been running an online poll on his website, asking visitors to express their opinions on EU’s biofuels policy. At the last count, some 89 per cent of the 60,000 respondents had voted for the EU to drop its biofuels targets, which have been widely criticised for taking food out of the mouths of the world’s hungry to put in the gas tanks of European vehicles. As of today the poll has mysteriously disappeared from President Barroso’s website, and nowhere has the result been announced. Has the President of the Commission been taking election advice from Robert Mugabe?… Read the rest

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Mapping the CAP 1: Google maps v farmsubsidy.org

Over at farmsubsidy.org you can see the first fruits of a mapping project which aims to place every EU farm subsidy payment on a fully interactive web-based map, powered by the excellent Google Maps. The first country to get the mapping treatment is Sweden, chosen because its government has been by far the most transparent in terms of farm subsidy payments. The map displays some € 7 billion in CAP expenditure in 2 million payments to 114,700 recipients since 2000. We think the map-based interface is a fascinating new platform for bringing the CAP closer to the citizens that pay for it.… Read the rest

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“Notre Europe” brainstorming

The think tank “Notre Europe” just released a document on the future of the CAP. Notre Europe’s point of view is that because the health check (HC) is likely to lead mostly to short term adjustments, the “real” debate on the CAP is likely to take place before the next financial perspectives. The outcome could be very contingent to the situation that will prevail in 2013 (e.g. market situations). Notre Europe launched a reflexion that intends to look to more structural changes, with a longer term horizon than the HC.

All the members of the (large) task force did not share a common position on this issue and instead of producing a UN-type consensual document, two of the members, L.P.… Read the rest

Posted on

"Notre Europe" brainstorming

The think tank “Notre Europe” just released a document on the future of the CAP. Notre Europe’s point of view is that because the health check (HC) is likely to lead mostly to short term adjustments, the “real” debate on the CAP is likely to take place before the next financial perspectives. The outcome could be very contingent to the situation that will prevail in 2013 (e.g. market situations). Notre Europe launched a reflexion that intends to look to more structural changes, with a longer term horizon than the HC.
All the members of the (large) task force did not share a common position on this issue and instead of producing a UN-type consensual document, two of the members, L.P.… Read the rest