World: By December of this year the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization should present results, how to reduce or abolish state funding and protectionism in the world's agriculture. The two major defendants in the negotiation are the U.S. and the EU. Unofficially the EU has offered to scratch its export subsidies. Obviously EU exports would not become easier. EU officials have spoken openly about necessary next steps, viz. an end to barley intervention or a general lowering of intervention prices. In the end it will probably become mandatory to reinvent the CAP. Whatever it will be, it will reduce state support to agriculture.

20 April, 2005