By Daisy Ayliffe - 25th September 2005
Sugar growers from the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries have agreed not to give up the fight for changes to proposed EU sugar reforms.
Meeting in Kenya on Sunday, ACP ministers promised to take their battle to EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.
The ACP also vowed to take their troubles to the forthcoming WTO negotiations if the EU did not respond to their requests.
"We will wage a relentless fight to put our case across forcefully to impress upon our partners that they have to honour their commitment," Arvin Boolell, Mauritian agriculture minister and ACP spokesman said on Sunday.
"We want to say loud and clear that the proposals are not justified."
EU agriculture ministers are considering a proposal from the EU Commission to reform its sugar policy.
ACP countries, mainly former colonies of Britain, France and Portugal, have opposed the plans on the grounds that they are too radical and would kill off their sugar sectors.
They have called on the EU to fulfill its moral and historical obligations to its former colonies.
The 18-member ACP sugar group supplies the EU with 1.3 million tonnes of raw sugar a year.
The price paid for the sugar could be cut about 40 per cent under the EU proposals but the ACP have insisted on smaller price cuts and greater compensation.
"Ministers are mindful of the need for reform of the EU sugar regime, but they regret that so far the concerns of the ACP states have been completely ignored," the ACP ministers said.
Clement Rohee, Guyana's minister for foreign trade and international cooperation, said the EU has shown there is very little room for change.
"They are saying forget it, we have already made up our mind, it is a done deal among ourselves and ... you take what we are giving to you, the 39 per cent cut and €40 million and that's it," Rohee said.
"But we can't accept that. We reject that."
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