EXCERPTS

EU-ACP/LDC informal meeting on sugar

In the afternoon, the Council held an informal meeting with ministers from the ACP and LDC sugar producing states to discuss the proposed Action Plan to assist them to adjust to the new situation after the planned reform of the EU’s sugar regime. Commissioner Fischer Boel stressed that the reform was now urgent and that she hoped for a political agreement before the WTO ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in December. She said the EU was fully aware that this would have knock-on effects for the ACP countries. Commissioner Michel stressed that the EU would help the countries to adapt on the basis of the actual needs of the countries concerned (see IP/05/85). Commissioner Mandelson underlined that preferential access to the EU market for ACP producers would be an important part of the Economic Partnership Agreements currently being negotiated with the ACP states.

Cereals market

A number of delegations raised the current problems being experienced on the cereals market because of the large harvest and the strength of the euro against the dollar. Commissioner Fischer Boel pointed out that the management committee had last week opened a tender to grant refunds for the export of 2 million tonnes of wheat. She said the Commission was also looking at ways of helping those countries with insufficient storage space to use spare intervention capacity in other Member States.

 Source:
http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/05/21&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN