Common Market accord near?

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32565, 26 March 1971, Page 9

Common Market accord near?

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) BRUSSELS, March 25. The Common Market Agriculture Ministers today appear ready to agree on a package deal linking price increases for European farmers with measures to reform the Community’s agricultural policy.

The sources say that the Ministers, after a 12-hour overnight session, have resolved provisionally their differences, chiefly between Italy and Germany, on how to pay for radical structural

measures to help Community farmers and to modernise the Agricultural Policy. The Ministers have been under intense pressure to reach a settlement after the riot by 80,000 European farmers in Brussels on Tuesday, which left one man killed, more than 150 injured, and wide areas of Brussels looking like a battlefield. The talks had been deadlocked over the past four days because of Italy’s insistence that she would accept price rices only if structural measures were agreed at the same time.

Italy, whose southern farmers are the poorest in the Community, would be the chief beneficiary of the cash aids provided for under the structural heading. Germany, the E.E.C.’s richest country, however, has to foot the largest bill of any new Community expenditure. She, therefore, steadfastly resisted any open-ended commitment on structural expenditure.