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Challenges by the EU

Following the Luxembourg decision, Hungary's efforts to achieve accession seem to have reached the final stage. Agriculture is certain to be one of the most sensitive issues in the negotiations, even though the facts discussed above do not justify the fears within the EU that Hungarian agriculture is a threat to the Union's farmers. Hungary wishes to improve its economy not through its agriculture but through its industrial production, which has proved quite expansive in recent years. (However, it remains true that achieving the earlier agricultural performance once again is a fundamental endeavour.) The objective is to have a competitive and export-oriented agricultural sector capable of providing a livelihood to a now radically reduced agrarian population, with a new product structure better adapted to the market.
Transformation, now in its final stage, has completely secured the dominance of private ownership, and with that dominance as a basis growth is a question of capital. True, this is the item which has so far been scarcest, and changing the current law restricting the market in land is probably the most important single condition for its influx. The promising developments in agriculture imply two elements that deserve special mention. One is the competitiveness of the food processing industry. Since its privatization was different from that of agriculture, it is back on its feet and already producing growth. With more than half of it now owned by foreign, mainly multinational, companies, Hungary already has "one foot in the EU", and has direct experience of the requirements of this market with respect to both quality and choice. The interest of this sector in the development and modernization of agriculture is no negligible quantity. The other important feature is the mixed company and farming structure, surviving despite the fragmentation of landed property, in which the market role of com-petitive large plants remains predominant. To preserve this is one of the country's elementary interests, and the greatest threat in that respect is posed by ideological prejudice.
The question as to what will be the conditions in which Hungary may become a participant in the common agricultural policy, whether it shall have to ask for, or take on, a period of transition, and whether as a new member, it will fully partake in the advantages of the older ones, must be clarified in the course of the negotiations. In that respect, Hungary's position is clear: the country is willing to accept the common burdens as well as the common advantages, and wishes to be a member of equal rank of the Union where agricultural issues are concerned. ß

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