A pledge to radically reform the EU's dairy regime but to postpone such reform for several years appears set to be the centrepiece of compromise proposals to be tabled at the farm talks today by the German Presidency.
The compromise is also expected to moderate cuts in the guarantee price of beef to some 20 per cent from the 30 per cent proposed by the Commission.
The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, said there was a new seriousness and focus on the issues, and progress could be made.
Postponement of reform of the dairy regime could save several billions on the Commission's original package of proposals, making it possible to come closer to meeting a generally-agreed farm budget ceiling of £32 billion by 2006.
Any agreement to postpone reform, however, will have to give some specific commitments to those who favour reform.
The British Secretary of State for Agriculture, Mr Nick Brown, said the final package would have to contain significant reforms of the dairy regime.
He warned that the milk quota regime would expire next year and that four countries, the UK, Italy, Sweden and Denmark, known as the "London Club", had sufficient votes between them to ensure that it was not renewed.
The result, a potential flooding of the market with cheap milk, was not an option he preferred, he said, but he was prepared to oppose renewal if an agreement did not include "serious and enduring" reforms.
The president of the Irish Farmers' Association, Mr Tom Parlon, gave a broad welcome to the apparent acceptance by the Germans that milk reform was not necessary to a global package.
