France rallies EU to defend farm handouts

(PARIS) - France rallied fellow EU states to defend generous subsidies for farmers at talks on Thursday that pointedly excluded Britain and other sceptics of Europe's costly agricultural policy.

"Together we make a resolute choice of a European agriculture and food policy," said a joint statement from France and 21 other EU countries after their meeting on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

The meeting aimed to stake out a strong position well in time for when the CAP is renegotiated in 2013, but it was also viewed in the light of a simmering row between Paris and London over European financial reform.

It came a week after British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy cancelled a lunch amid differences over plans for tighter regulation that London fears would penalise the City of London.

France invited Britain to send an "observer" to monitor the talks, but Brown's government replied that Agriculture Minister Hilary Benn would not be able to come to Paris because of prior commitments.

French Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire told reporters that Thursday's talks were a "complicated" effort to coordinate the diverging views of 22 different countries.

He insisted that the "strategic" goals of the farm policy must not be "sold out."

Poland meanwhile called explicitly for the current generous levels of handouts for farmers to be maintained.

"We sent a very strong signal that we need strong European policy in the agricultural sector (and) that policy should be financed on an ambitious level," said Poland's secretary of state for agriculture, Andrzej Dycha.

"The Polish position is that it should be at a level which is similar to today at least."

The joint declaration after meeting called for a policy that would "give farmers the means to better respond to market signals and build winning strategies for all the sectors" and "address environmental challenges."

Five EU states were not invited to the talks: Britain, Denmark, Malta, the Netherlands and Sweden, which are thought to favour a tightening of the rules on hand-outs to farmers.

France had insisted the guest list was not intended as a snub to its partners and has made it clear that its goal is to protect the system.

On Tuesday, Le Maire told reporters the talks were "not turned against anyone."

"It is normal that states that share the same ambition for the CAP can come together to reflect on its future," he said.

While Britain prides itself on being a world financial capital, France -- despite becoming an urban and industrialised society in the past century -- still sees farming as a key part of its national identity.

Sarkozy's government is bent on using its clout within Europe to both rein in what it sees as the excesses of British-style financial capitalism, while protecting the system of subsidy that supports its own farmers.

France's farmers, a small but politically very vocal fraction of the population, are by far the biggest beneficiaries of the European Union's annual 56-billion-euro (82-billion-dollar) agriculture budget.

As the bloc's biggest farm producer, the home of champagne and camembert received 10 billion euros in subsidies last year.

But the European Commission is seeking to shrink agriculture as a share of the bloc's budget and Europe faces pressure in world trade negotiations to reduce its subsidies for the sake of poor farmers from the developing world.