Naturally,
flood-affected farmers throughout the region - from the Czech Republic
to Poland - are vigorously protesting their unequal treatment and the
compromises their governments are arm-twisted into making. Still,
according to a survey released last December by the European
Commission, 60 percent of the denizens of the accession countries
support it.
As the endgame nears, the parties to the negotiations are posturing,
though. EU enlargement commissioner, Gunter Verheugen, argued a
fortnight ago against equalizing support for Poland's 6 million farmers
with the subsidies given to the EU's 8 million smallholders. In a
typical feat of incongruity he said it will prevent them from
modernizing and alienate other professions.
Franz Fischler, the Austrian EU's agriculture commissioner, hinted that
miserly production quotas for cereals, meat and dairy products, offered
by the EU to the seething applicants, can be augmented. The EU
presently provides the candidate countries with funding, within the
Special Accession Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development
(SAPARD) to support farm investments, to boost processing and marketing
of farm and fishery products and to bankroll infrastructure
improvements. Hungarian farmers, for instance, are entitled to up to
$38 million of SAPARD money annually.
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