Czech Republic hoping to get a better deal at Copenhagen summit
With the EU's Copenhagen summit approaching, accession talks with the candidate countries are drawing to a close. However, many Czech official representatives are reserved about the outcome of recent negotiations between the Czech delegation and the European Commission, and are hoping the Czech Republic will be able to negotiate better deals at the Copenhagen summit. One area Czechs hope to get a better deal in is agriculture.
After separate talks with Denmark and the European Commission on Monday, the Czech Republic failed to push through two of its five priority goals. It accepted the proposal of the Danish presidency and gave up its demand for higher production quotas for beef, paving the way for the problematic agriculture chapter to be closed. Agriculture Minister Jaroslav Palas.
"We reached some goals but it could have been better. First of all I'd like to say that we negotiated quite a reasonable quota for milk. What we did not achieve is a higher production quota for non-dairy cows, we settled on a total of 90,300 head of cattle."
The original demand was for 132,000 cows. Minister Palas said the country was now considering some replacement programme for cattle breeding, subsidised from other sources. Similarly, the Czech Republic had to accept export quotas of 13,000 tonnes of sugar instead of the originally requested 60,000. Last week, Czech farmers, dissatisfied with the EU accession terms, rallied in Prague in their largest protest so far and they are planning further protests on Thursday at several of the country's border crossings. The Agriculture Ministry is aware of a lack of support for EU entry among Czech farmers and at the eleventh hour it is planning a promotion campaign.
"We are preparing a kind of explanatory campaign for our farmers throughout the country. We would like to explain the positive but also negative aspects of EU entry. The positive aspects prevail, of course."
Czech farmers still hope the Czech delegation will negotiate better terms for them at Copenhagen as far as direct payments in the years 2004-2006 are concerned. Minister Palas would like to see the initial 25 percent level of subsidies, compared with current members, increased to between 40 and 100 percent, as he considers the unequal terms discriminating.
