E.U budget talks collapse

[Filuwaúrdjan]

No suprise there then. The main row was (suprise, suprise) over the CAP and the British Rebate, with the U.K saying that it would only agree to get rid of the Rebate if the CAP (which takes up 40% of the E.U budget. Note that only 5% of the E.U's workforce and 2% of it's GDP is in the agricultural sector...) is reformed/gutted/scrapped with France (suprise, suprise) refusing to even consider reforming CAP and demanding that the U.K gets rid of the rebate.

Interesting graph:



I can't remember exactly which countries said they'd vote against the budget but IIRC it was the U.K, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and (suprisingly) Spain. Maybe some other countries as well... IIRC Denmark and Italy said they were going to abstain, which is as good a vote against without it actually being a vote against.

[Huckleberry Finn]

How is Ireland taker, if they are fifth richest nation in the earth?

I'm glad that UK has taken tough line. It's time for a reform in the EU's agriculture policy.

[Gustaf]

The way the EU system works it benefits countries with great regional variation. Basically, the EU should get rid of CAP and regional support altogether.

[Јas]

How is Ireland taker, if they are fifth richest nation in the earth?

I'm glad that UK has taken tough line. It's time for a reform in the EU's agriculture policy.

1. Ireland retains a significant agricultural community who obviously benefit from CAP.

2. The BMW (Border, Midlands and Western) region of Ireland benefits from Structural and Cohesion funding.

One could quite easily dispute that we are the fifth richest nation anyway, our GDP figures are not a great indicator as a large amount of company profits declared here are repatriated, usually to the US. GNP is a better measure, and has traditionally been around 15% below GDP.

[Huckleberry Finn]

In Finland there is huge variation between the areas. The problem has been that according to EU there must be good agricultural areas in every country. Since the best farming areas of Finland (south west) are good areas if compaired with other parts of Finland but that is not much.  Therefore these "high quality" areas do not get any subsidize.  Sweden has different story, since there is no regional variation (nobody lives in glesbygden . Secondly their best areas are best in European context meaning that if CAP is abolished there will be still Swedish farming community

And our prime minister has already given up on the EU budget.
 
Doesn't sound "good" concerning next year presidential election.

[Peter]

I can't remember exactly which countries said they'd vote against the budget but IIRC it was the U.K, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and (suprisingly) Spain. Maybe some other countries as well... IIRC Denmark and Italy said they were going to abstain, which is as good a vote against without it actually being a vote against.

It doesn't actually surprise me that Spain said they would vote against, they've been ... well ... reasonable and fair recently, which isn't something you often get in the EU Council meetings.