Brown attacks CAP reform failure

Wednesday, 29 June 2005 12:00 AM

Chancellor Gordon Brown today criticised the failure of the EU to reform the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

In an attack on protectionism in industrialised countries, he threw down a challenge to the EU to set a date for ending export subsidies.

And he accused European countries of hypocrisy for pledging increased aid to Africa while kicking their heels over agricultural trade reform.

Speaking to the UN children's fund (Unicef) he said: "We cannot any longer ignore what people in the poorest countries will see as our hypocrisy of developed country protectionism."

"We should be opening our markets and removing trade-distorting subsidies and in particular, doing more to urgently tackle the waste of the Common Agricultural Policy by now setting a date for the end of export subsidies."

His comments come just a week ahead of the G8 summit in Gleneagles where world leaders will discuss the challenges of poverty and climate change.

And today Mr Brown called for "nothing short of a new relationship" between rich and poor countries, founded on the removal of unpayable debt and the doubling of aid.

Setting out the need for a "partnership of equals", he warned that unfair trade rules not only prevented people from throwing off the shackles of poverty, "but shackle poor people and poor communities still further".

He said "trade justice" was about empowering poor countries to compete on equal terms, and stressed that the proposed International Finance Facility (IFF), which would double aid flows by borrowing money on international bond markets, could play a key role in this.

Between now and 2015 the IFF for immunisation could save the lives of five million children and adults.

"If this is what the International Finance Facility can achieve with one pilot fund and one initiative in one area, think what the International Finance Facility can achieve not just across the whole of health care but also for education the provision of water and infrastructure and for economic development," he said.

But the Chancellor also recognised the need for openness and transparency in developing countries, whereby people could see where their money was going and who was doing what.

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