"What we are witnessing in the world is the consequence of too much free-market liberalism. We can't leave feeding people to the mercy of the market," said Barnier in an interview with The Financial Times, published on 28 April 2008.
The agriculture minister of Europe's biggest farming power thus strongly defended the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and its subsidies policy, the biggest portion of which has always gone to France.
He said CAP subsidies - worth €55 billion - are in no way to blame for the current hike in commodity prices and argued that regional versions of the EU's agriculture policy for Africa and Latin America would actually help solve the crisis. "It is a policy that allows us to produce to feed ourselves. We pool our resources to support production," he said, adding that EU should help the developing world to build up such regional farm subsidy systems.
Barnier's comments got a chilly reception from independent Brussels-based think tanks. Jorge Nunez Ferrer, a specialist on EU CAP reform at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) told Forbes.com that he "almost had a heart attack" when reading the French minister's ideas. He argued that the CAP is "a policy for a group of rich countries, with very few producers, that produce a lot and export vast amounts to other countries". Therefore, it is not a proper model for poor countries.
"This is an argument against free trade," added Indhira Santos, a research fellow at Bruegel, speaking to the business news portal. She also wondered why consumers should support farmers in a period in which the prices are high, whereas they should be the ones putting an end to the situation.
The EU's Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer-Boel insists that there is no connection between EU agricultural subsidies and the rise in food prices.
A non-legislative CAP 'health check' was proposed by the Commission in November 2007 to set the stage for discussions in advance of formal legislative proposals in May 2008. It proposed, among others, a tighter subsidy regime and a greater shift of funds from direct payments to rural development support - ideas heavily opposed by the EU 27 agricultural ministers.
