The temperature rose sharply yesterday in Luxembourg as EU foreign ministers plunged into the serious bargaining phase of budget reform and angry farmers prepared to rally against cuts. In Brussels police yesterday surrounded EU institutions and a sizeable part of the European quarter with a ring of barbed wire ahead of today's expected influx of 30,000 farmers.
Farm ministers convene today for a marathon meeting due to start after they have met representatives of protesting farmers and which may well last until the weekend to see if they can break the agriculture logjam in the talks.
The Minister of Agriculture, Mr Walsh, will express special concern at the current proposals to cut dramatically guaranteed beef and dairy prices without compensating farmers fully.
In Luxembourg yesterday, where foreign ministers were preparing next Friday's mini-summit in Bonn, sharp words were exchanged as the German presidency again demanded painful cuts in structural funds and farm spending. There are growing fears that a serious summit clash will be inevitable.
"We are prepared to take some pain, but are unwilling to be crucified," an angry Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, told journalists after German ministers had demanded a cutback in the transition for former Objective 1 regions from six years to four, the ending of "cohesion funding" to euro-members, and multi-billion pound cuts in the overall structural funds budget.
Mr Andrews said such proposals represented the difference between a "soft landing and a crash landing". Sources close to the Taoiseach now expect Friday's Bonn summit to produce sparks as heads of government for the first time set out their bottom lines for the negotiations which are supposed to conclude a month later in Berlin. Mr Andrews, it is understood, later interrupted the summing up by the German Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, describing it as unfair. Mr Ahern will today describe such proposals as "dramatically adverse for Ireland even in comparison with the Commission's proposals". In an important declaration on the Irish position on Agenda 2000 to the Irish Council of the European Movement, Mr Ahern will also admit publicly for the first time that he expects Ireland to become a net contributor to the EU in 2007. The aggressive German posture, although clearly a negotiating position, may raise questions about the wisdom of the early Irish conditional welcome for the Commission's Agenda 2000 proposals. At that stage it was felt the negotiations would centre on finding a happy middle line between the national position and the Commission.
As one Irish diplomat put it last night "the trouble is now that every new contribution to the talks adds an element on the far side of the Commission proposals. They have simply pocketed our acceptance of the Commission proposals and upped the ante". Up to 5,000 police will try to prevent a repeat of 1971, when 70,000 farmers ran amok in the city and one protester died. Belgian farmers have been banned from moving tractors more than 10km from their land and farmers with 62 tractors and lorries from northern Italy have been held at the frontier with Luxembourg since last Thursday.
Shops and offices on the route of the march have been warned by police to close shutters and remove any visible EU symbols.
In his speech today Mr Ahern will attempt to sketch out a bottom-line position for Irish negotiators, acknowledging the contribution that EU funds have made to the success of the Irish economy but warning of the structural deficit the State still faces.
