TALKS on BSE compensation for farmers and the rebalancing of the beef market adjourned here last night with the Commission and member-states still at loggerheads.
The Irish presidency was working through the night to prepare a new compromise package with the Commission. However, unless the latter comes up with a specific and very large sum of extra compensation for farmers, the talks are expected to collapse before lunch.
Ministers made it clear that they totally rejected earlier Commission proposals to take cash from the arable sector. The Commission was last night saying that, while it favoured increased income support, it wanted the ministers to specify where the money would come from.
The French were saying they want to see £400 million on the table before they will even talk of the rebalancing measures. Their Minister, Mr Philippe Vasseur, said the Commission had to find the political will to come up with extra cash.
Irish sources spoke of the absurdity of suggesting a few hundred million could not be found in the agricultural budget of £32 billion. The compensation being sought was in addition to some £640 million already paid out.
The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Yates, said last night that any agreement would have to include specific figures. While yesterday morning's compromise proposal had been unanimously rejected, it would now be radically rewritten and there was the glimmer of a prospect for an agreement.
The package put before ministers yesterday, largely the work of the Commission, was attacked by member-states from all sides. The so-called "Herod premium" for slaughtering calves was opposed by the Germans and Swedes on welfare grounds.
The presidency compromise this morning is likely to remove compulsion by offering as an alternative a German proposal for an early calf marketing premium.
The Germans also attacked the extensification payments system - which aims to encourage more natural methods of production - as discriminatory.
Such measures and the Commission's proposals for new structural reforms, such as aids to early retirement, are now likely to form part of a package of long- term measures for the reform of the beef market which will be brought forward by the Commission within the next six months.
The ministers are likely to agree a ceiling for intervention of 550,000 tonnes this year, down from the 750,000 tonnes proposed by the Commission.
The president of the IFA, Mr John Donnelly, welcomed the determination to keep talking but said that, while it was clear compensation would be forthcoming, with Irish livestock farm incomes down 40 per cent, it would be inadequate to meet the losses incurred.
The president of the ICMSA, Mr Frank Allen, accused the Council of Ministers of dragging its heels on income-support.
Meanwhile, the Ulster Farmers' Union has reiterated its willingness, as a last resort, to pay for a special cull in the North if this will contribute to getting their beef back on to the world market.
The president of the union, Mr Greer McCollum, said the cull would involve only some 1,685 cattle.
