France faces £100,000 a day fine over UK beef ban

France faces fines of up to £100,000 per day for its ban on British beef after the European Commission decided yesterday to take the French government back to Europe's highest court.

The move puts pressure on the French authorities to fall into line with an earlier court judgment, and end the only embargo of British beef in any of the 15 EU member states.

Yesterday's legal move against the French government marks the culmination of one of the most acrimonious disputes in recent relations between the UK and France.

In 1999 the EU judged British beef to be safe after strict measures were taken to combat BSE. But, denied the blessing of French food safety experts, the government in Paris defied the order and was taken to the European Court of Justice, which last year found that France had been at fault.

In asking for fines of £100,000 per day, the Commission said it had taken into account the economic impact of the French ban and the country's ability to pay. The court can, however, decide what fines to impose on a country. Greece is the only nation so far to face such a decision when it was ordered to pay €24,000 (£15,400) per day for being in breach of a court ruling on waste management. The proceeds go into the general EU budget.

Although France has said there will be no review of its beef embargo until the autumn, there is little doubt that it will now have to give way.

How long the French government can stall will be determined by the court in Luxembourg. The Commission asked yesterday for accelerated procedures, which could bring a result within several months. However, it has made similar requests in eight different cases and has only been granted a speedy hearing once. Normally, the court takes around 18 months to complete a case.

The action against France came as EU experts relaxed controls on abattoirs that want to export British beef to the continent, allowing them to serve both the domestic and the continental markets.

However, a new move to monitor the spread of BSE in the UK means that all cattle over the age of 42 months will have to be tested after they have been slaughtered.

The European Commission says that would increase slightly the requirements on the UK which, at present, tests all animals born between August 1996 and August 1997, plus a further 50,000 cattle over the age of 30 months.

The BSE epidemic gripped Britain in 1996 and, as a result, the Commission announced a global export ban on British beef. This was relaxed in August 1999 when the UK was allowed to resume limited exports under strict conditions, under the so-called Date Based Export Scheme. All EU nations except France removed the embargoes.

France, sensitive to public concerns over an earlier health scare concerning contaminated blood, cited continuing worries of its own scientific experts over mad cow disease.

In last year's ruling in the Court of Justice, France "failed to fulfil its obligations by refusing to permit the marketing in its territory of correctly marked or labelled products subject to the Date Based Export Scheme".

However, the ruling also criticised European Commission rules for their lack of clarity and concluded that the labelling arrangements in other EU countries had not been strict enough in 1999 to ensure that all British beef was clearly marked.

The UK is still not exporting any beef to the continent. Only two abattoirs were licensed to do so but their sales were stopped during the foot-and-mouth outbreak. That situation should be eased by the decision to allow abattoirs to provide for both the domestic and the continental markets.