Europe Mart Reaches Accord on Farm Policy

Leaders of the European Economic Community, at an emergency summit meeting here, resolved a dispute over farm policies early today, ending a year of wrangling that brought the 12-nation organization perilously close to financial crisis.

The agreement came after two unsuccessful summits on the same topic and two days of round-the-clock consultations and negotiations, which finally resulted in putting fixed ceilings on agricultural production and farm subsidies.

The complex package also provides for an increase in each country’s national contribution to the Common Market budget and additional spending for the poorer regions of member nations.

After agreement was reached, Jacques Delors of France, president of the European Commission, the Common Market’s executive body, said:

“We have achieved what most people thought was out of reach, and the agreement is indispensable to our goal of a unified common market for all of Europe by 1992. Without this agreement, there would have been stagnation in Europe.”

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who presided at this summit meeting, said, “We would not have achieved this success without everyone making concessions. Every government defended its own interests. We have scored a common success.”

And Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who held out the longest for the most stringent budgetary controls to end soaring farm spending, declared, “It was a very tough settlement.”

Complicated by Elections

The Brussels meeting opened Thursday in a pessimistic atmosphere because of the knotty problems created by huge farm surpluses in major countries, notably France and West Germany, and differing views on how to deal with the problems and bring spending under control.

The talks were further complicated by a forthcoming presidential election in France and two key state elections in West Germany, in which farmers’ votes are expected to be critical factors.

The heads of government discussed other aspects of the budget, namely the idea of “set-asides,” that is, paying farmers to take land out of production; the amount of money to be allocated to such relatively poorer members as Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, and revised ways to collect revenue for the community.

For most of Friday, it appeared that a package deal would collapse because of a resolute stand taken by Thatcher on a lower ceiling for market-wide grain production, which has yielded a mountainous surplus in recent years.

However, in a surprise shift late Friday, Thatcher accepted a higher figure that had been pressed by France in return for lower expenditures in other areas of Common Market agricultural spending.

The British insisted, as part of the agreement, that rigorous controls--binding under law--be applied to various aspects of community expenditures for farmers and farm products.

Role of Farmers

A major problem in recent years has been the way in which the various countries and their leaders have viewed the role of farmers in their societies.

France, for instance, has more than 1 million farmers, whose political muscle is strongly felt throughout the country.

France also was represented at the summit by both President Francois Mitterrand and Premier Jacques Chirac, who may face one another in the presidential election this spring. Thus, they resisted Thatcher’s demands for a lower grain production ceiling to please their own farmers.

Similarly, West Germany’s Kohl faces elections in two states with large farming populations.

In an earlier summit at Copenhagen in December, the leaders had agreed on limits for many other products, including wine, tobacco, sugar, fruit, and meats. But the negotiations here Friday were slowed because France’s Chirac insisted on bringing up the subject of the commodities that had previously been dealt with. This infuriated Thatcher, who called the French action “absolutely crazy.”

In the end, however, the West Germans, who were desperately seeking a compromise between the French goal of a ceiling of 160 million metric tons on production of cereal grains and the British desire for a top of 155 million tons, worked hard for the compromise as a crown for Kohl’s presidency of the community.