Dans un ouvrage récent, trois chercheurs anglais mettent en évidence les injustices criantes de la PAC européenne:
"Tony Blair is right in saying that the CAP money should be redirected to other areas and this needs to begin before 2013," said Mark Shucksmith of the University of Newcastle, one of the book's authors. (...)
The book, "CAP and The Regions: The Territorial Impact of the Common Agricultural Policy," funded by EU institutions, coincides with Britain's turn at the rotating EU presidency.
It comes during a lull in a bitter feud between Blair and French
President Jacques Chirac over EU farm subsidies that is certain to flare up once Europe is back from summer holidays.
Blair is resisting calls led by Chirac for Britain to give up its EU budget rebate -- which compensates for the relative little it takes from the CAP -- without a pre-2013 shake-up of the scheme that gobbles up 42 percent of all EU spending.
The authors found that "rich core regions" in Germany, Britain, France and the Netherlands collectively take a bigger slice of the CAP pie than poorer peripheral regions in Spain, Italy, Poland, and southern and eastern Europe.
What is more, wrote Shucksmith, Ken Thomson and Deb Roberts of Aberdeen University, this has remained the case even after CAP reforms were put into place in 2003-2004. (...)
The findings dovetail with the European Commission's estimate that 80 percent of CAP subsidies go to 20 percent of Europe's farmers -- with agricultural conglomerates pocketing the biggest handouts.
They also reinforce the arguments of development campaigners who complain that EU and US farm subsidies generate huge surpluses that make it impossible for poor African farmers to escape poverty and compete on the global market.
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