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EU SUGAR REFORM A BITTER PILL FOR POORER PRODUCERS
David Kleimann*
FEBRUARY 2008 (IPS/South Centre) - For more than three decades, the European Union has maintained an extremely costly supply management scheme for its domestic sugar market which insulates domestic producers from international market forces with price supports and tariffs and has resulted in domestic prices triple world market prices and a major production surplus. At the same time, the EU has granted duty free market access for guaranteed quantities to some of its former colonies at guaranteed prices, writes David Kleimann, a German expert on international law and international relations.
In February 2006, the EU adopted a radical reform programme of its sugar
regime which is having severe effects. Some ACP (Africa, Caribbean and Pacific countries) high-cost producers are very
likely to cease production because of the price reductions, while others
will face a sharp reduction in their export earnings, and only a small group
of competitive Least Developed Countries will be able to comfortably continue to supply the EU
market after the price reductions have been implemented and the preferences
terminated.
The EU has the moral and legal obligation to provide the small and
vulnerable ACP economies with market access for sugar that is worth no less
than the previous trade arrangement and that continues to contribute to the
realisation of ACP countries economic development and poverty reduction.
/NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN AUSTRALIA, CANADA, NEW ZEALAND, CZECH
REPUBLIC, IRELAND, POLAND, UNITED STATES OR UNITED KINGDOM/ (END/2008)
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