E.E.C. Agreement On Farm Policy

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31120, 25 July 1966, Page 14

E.E.C. Agreement On Farm Policy

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter—Copyright) BRUSSELS, July 24. Common Market ministers agreed as dawn broke today on a common farm policy after last-minute concessions by Italy and Holland over fruit and vegetable prices.

Agriculture and Foreign Ministers of the Six reached agreement on a package deal after a gruelling all-night bargaining session, which ended almost three days and two nights of negotiations and months of abortive discussions.

The deal includes market regulations for fruit and vegetables, sugar, fat and oils and unified prices for sugar, meat, milk, rice, and olive oil. But the ministers did not have time to settle the community’s joint offers on farm products to be tabled in the Kennedy round of tariff cutting negotiations in Geneva.

Mr Barend Biesheuvel, the Dutch Agriculture Minister and current president of the community's Ministerial Council, described the agreement as one of the most important decisions the council had taken.

He told a press conference

after the meeting in Brussels’s: Congress Palace that the crux of the marathon negotiation had been Italy and Holland’s I clash over fruit and vegetable ; I prices. Both countries had had to make considerable concessessions, and it was largely due to the compromise proposals put forward by the Common Market Commission, drawn up by the Dutch vicepresident, Dr. Sicco Mansholt, that agreement was finally reached, he said. Professor Walter Hallstein, : West German president of the 'commission said: “No other group of States in history has :ever been able to agree onj

; such wide-sweeping arrangements for agriculture.” FINAL APPROVAL The ministers will meet again on Tuesday to settle the problem of joint offers to the Geneva negotiations and approve the texts of their agreement last May on a new farm financing regulation and the completion of the com--munity’s customs union. Informed conference sources emphasised that final approval of the farm financing regulation and today’s agricultural package deal by Italy and Holland was still dependent on satisfactory agreement on the bloc’s Kennedy | round policy.