Farming-out the Money
- October 27th, 2006
- Posted by Lee Duffield
A former Danish Agriculture Minister with a commitment to efficient business practices is campaigning to see through the reform of Europe’s cumbersome, expensive and always controversial Common Agricultural Policy – the CAP.
Mariann Fischer Boel is the European Commission’s Agriculture and Rural Development member, an executive responsible for annual spending in the order of EU 50-billion (A$82.6-billion; Decrates).
The budget figure is at the heart of the drive for renovation, because, as the Commissioner avers, the European Union is committed to substantial capping of its expenditure from 2013:
“If I have recently begun speaking about what the CAP could look like after 2013, this is not because I want to whip up an atmosphere of permanent change … but that if further change is probably necessary we need to think about it now.”
In response to that sentiment she has been following a hectic schedule of speech-making and brain-storming with allies, advisors and clients in agriculture.
(Read the full article on agri-politics, in EUAustralia Online, Features - Commentary) … Read More »
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