Sugar price cuts ‘jar’ with UN goals

Date: 15/09/05

Farm ministers from 18 developing countries will tell their EU counterparts next week that planned reforms of the Union's sugar regime will exacerbate poverty.

Sugar is to be the dominant theme of discussions on Monday (19 September), involving EU governments and the 18 signatories of the sugar protocol for the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) grouping. The ACP group will criticise the European Commission's proposal to cut the price for sugar by 39% over a four-year period.

George Bullen, ambassador to the EU for the Eastern Caribbean states and chairman of the ACP Consultative Group on Sugar, said the reform plan jarred with the Union's stated commitment to the UN's Millennium Development Goals for reducing hardship.

"The package will increase poverty for hundreds of thousands of vulnerable sugar cane farmers," he said, arguing that the Commission had a legal commitment to protect them under the protocol. This 1975 agreement guarantees that ACP countries will be able to export fixed quantities of sugar to the Union at preferential prices.

Signatories of the protocol include Belize, Kenya, Jamaica, Mauritius, Mozambique, the Ivory Coast, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Other poor countries that have not signed the protocol but are reliant on sugar for foreign exchange earnings will also send representatives to Monday's meeting.

Mariann Fischer Boel, the European commissioner for agriculture, this week urged EU ministers to agree on sugar reform at their November meeting ahead of the December ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization in Hong Kong.

Fischer Boel maintained that a 39% cut was necessary to avoid "major disruption" to the EU sugar market after 2009. Under the Everything But Arms scheme, sugar from the world's least developed countries will be allowed duty-free access to the Union by 1 July that year.

Anticipation of a ministerial meeting between the ACP Group of States and the European Union to discuss the EU's proposed amendments for its sugar, 19 September 2005

ACP Secretariat: Press Release: African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries express extreme dissatisfaction with EU sugar reform proposals and accompanying measures - Reform too fast, too deep, too soon, 22.6.05 http://www.acpsec.org/en/press_releases/sugar_group_22-06-05.htm

European Commission: DG Agriculture and Rural Development: Reform of the sugar sector https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/sugar_en

ACP: ACP Sugar Website: Press Release: ACP Ministers to meet EU counterparts to make case for just and equitable sugar reform, 16.9.05 http://www.acpsugar.org/docs/ACP%20Press%20Release%20160905.pdf

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