Straw to warn Brussels not to fudge reform of agriculture policy

Britain will today demand sweeping changes to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as it issues a last-minute warning to the European Commission not to fudge the crucial issue of reform.

Speaking in Budapest, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, will reveal the yardstick against which the British Government will measure the long-awaited changes to be outlined tomorrow by Franz Fischler, the EU Agriculture Commissioner. The reforms are seen as crucial if plans for the EU to take in 10 new members by 2004 are to go ahead.

Mr Straw will list Britain's demands as achieving overall savings in the £27 billion-a-year farm budget; cuts in price support; an end to the link between payments and production; higher funding for environmental and rural development; and new measures to promote food safety. "Securing these outcomes would be a major achievement for the European Commission and the EU as a whole," he will say.

The Foreign Secretary will admit that CAP reform "will be a marathon not a sprint," but will stress that radical reform is vital. "The CAP continues to frustrate EU-wide efforts to promote environmental protection. And by erecting a protectionist barrier against the rest of the world, it acts as a brake on economic and social development in the Third World, particularly Africa," he will say.

However, Mr Straw will insist that the difficulties over securing reform must not be used as an excuse to delay the enlargement plans, due to be approved by EU leaders in Copenhagen in December.

He will say: "Our concerns about the CAP do not dilute our support for enlargement. The United Kingdom's – and the European Union's – commitment to EU expansion is unwavering. Reunification will be the greatest achievement of the current European generation. If we allow this opportunity to slip from our grasp it would represent Europe's greatest failure since the war."

Mr Straw will also set out a three-point plan to strengthen European security based on an expanded and modernised Nato; a credible European security and defence policy to handle crisis management operations both with Nato support and without it; and an expanded European Union.

He will say: "EU enlargement won't just tackle the traditional sources of conflict such as poverty and age-old ethnic rivalry. It will also allow more countries than ever before to tackle common security problems which are of immediate concern to European citizens, such as cross-border crime and illegal immigration."