The reforms are long overdue. But at last the European Union is proposing to cut its sugar subsidies, which the World Trade Organization ruled illegal in May.
The EU pays its producers three times the going price for sugar and exports the resulting surpluses very cheaply. That has kept the global market price low and makes it hard for non-subsidised farmers to compete.
Agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel proposes cutting the EU’s set price by 39 per cent by 2008. This, plus compensation, is intended to persuade the least efficient beet farmers in countries such as Greece and Finland to…
