Start of agricultural negotiations with EU

The European Integration Ministry will begin the first talks on the “Agriculture” negotiation chapter in Brussels next week, the most difficult chapter out of the 30 on the agenda of the negotiations with the EU. Integration minister Vasile Puscas on Wednesday said Romania would cling on to every bit of the chapter during the negotiations, given the significance and weight of agriculture in the Romanian economy. Romania’s farming sector, whose performance is among the weakest in Europe, employs 40% of the total work force. As soon as Romania joins the EU, its subsistence agriculture will have to take on the high-tech heavily subsidised agriculture (over 40 billion euros a year) in the EU. The problem used to be addressed by customs barriers in the past, which reached 200% by 1997, for instance. The barriers were gradually lowered as requested by the EU and will be completely dropped upon accession. How will the Romanian agriculture cope with the fierce competition on the EU market, that is hard to say at the moment. The Romanian officials, however, hope to get the EU during the extremely tough negotiations to agree to safeguarding taxes against the cheaper higher quality European products for a number of years from the integration onwards. ZF