The EU is the world's second largest producer and exporter of sugar, trailing only Brazil.

Barjol said the EU Commission decided to ``roll over'' the EU sugar regime ``for the next 5 years, from July 1, 2001, to June 30, 2006,'' with support prices ``fixed for 5 years.'' The EU intervention price for its ``A-quota'' refined sugar is approximately 32 cents per pound, compared with the U.S. refined sugar support price of 22.9 cents per pound, essentially unchanged since 1985.

Barjol said there was little or no budgetary or consumer pressure to reduce EU sugar support prices. He noted that sugar accounts for only about 3.5 percent of the total cost of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, and that percentage has been dropping.

Barjol said that sugar accounts for a very small fraction of EU consumer expenditures. He noted that in developed countries, sugar's share of food expenditures was no greater than 1.9 percent. The United States is one of the four lowest in the world, at only 0.9 percent.

Barjol said that consumers are unlikely to see any benefit even if producer prices were to drop. He said that, because of sugar's small portion of the retail price of a sweetened product, even if a 10-percent drop in producer prices were passed along, 100 percent, to consumers, the effect on the ultimate retail price of each product would be less than one penny. ``In most cases,'' Barjol said, the lower producer price ``could not be materialized in the retail price.''

``Furthermore,'' Barjol said, ``the actual passthrough to consumers is quite small -- certainly far less than 100 percent.''

Barjol also said that the greatest threat to EU sugar producers is not from budgetary or consumer pressure, but most probably from an EU initiative called ``Everything But Arms (EBA).'' Under this program, the EU has agreed to open its market to duty-free imports of all non-military products from the world's 48 least developed countries. The EU estimates additional imports under this program could be 0.9 - 2.7 million metric tons.

Barjol said such a level of imports would be devastating for the EU sugar regime, and would benefit some developing countries at the expense of others. Barjol noted that the EU already imports 1.3 million tons of sugar per year, at the EU preferential price, from developing countries, most of which oppose this initiative because of its threat to their current guaranteed access to the EU market.

Luther Markwart, chairman of the American Sugar Alliance (ASA), which is hosting the Symposium, commented: ``I would draw three conclusions from Mr. Barjol's presentation. First, with EU sugar price supports nearly 30 percent higher than ours, international trade negotiations should not force us to reduce our support level until producers such as the EU drop their level to ours. Second, just as is the case in the U.S., consumers realize that sugar is cheap, and that food manufacturers do not pass any savings along to consumers when producer prices for sugar drop. Finally, the United States is the world's fourth largest sugar importer. We already guarantee duty-free access to nearly 40 developing countries, at the expense of American sugar producers' share of our market. We do not need to open our market any further to EBA-type initiatives.''

Markwart is also executive vice president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association, which represents 12,000 beet growers and their families nationwide.

The American Sugar Alliance is a national coalition of growers, processors and refiners of sugarbeets, sugarcane and corn for sweetener.

For more information about U.S. sugar policy visit American Sugar Alliance at http://www.sugaralliance.org .