PETER MANDELSON shrugged off threats from France and offered to cut the European Union’s agricultural tariffs by almost 50 per cent in an effort to prevent the collapse of long-running talks to liberalise world trade yesterday.

The European Trade Commissioner hoped that the concessions would unblock the stalled negotiations in the Doha round of talks and pave the way for an agreement in Hong Kong in December, which would open up markets around the world for European industrial goods and services.

“The cuts are deep and real. This will drive down our tariffs across the board,” Mr Mandelson said.

However, Washington said that the revised EU offer contained a number of loopholes. A spokesman for Rob Portman, the US Trade Representative, said that “much more needs to be done”. The spokesman added: “If the final Doha agreement on agriculture were to go no further than this . . . the Doha round would not approach its potential for promoting development, opportunity and global economic growth.”

Mr Mandelson’s proposal would cut Europe’s highest agricultural tariffs by 60 per cent and the lowest by 35 per cent. with an average reduction of 46 per cent. This would be considerably more than the 25 per cent cut that the EU had placed on the table but substantially less than the 90 per cent demanded by the US and the 75 per cent sought by the G20 group of developing countries.

Mr Mandelson, however, said that cuts on the scale sought by the US and the G20 would have a devastating impact on European farmers. Such cuts would remove the commercial advantages that many of the world’s poorest countries enjoy from preferential access to the European market, he added.

“If we had accepted the American demand this would have led to the removal of €6 billion (£4 billion) from the total of €9 billion that African, Caribbean and Pacific countries trade with us,” he said.

The Trade Commissioner said that his offer was “Europe’s bottom line”. The offer was also conditional on other countries taking similar measures on agriculture and the opening up of markets to encourage greater trade in manufactured goods and services.

The National Farmers Union said that the offer was “the extreme edge of what will be feasible for us to live with”. It added: “British farmers are not big global exporters, we’re mainly importers, so there is little gain and mostly pain for us.”

Oxfam gave warning that the fine print “may yet make the deal meaningless for Europe’s trading partners”.

Mr Mandelson has come under increasing pressure from Washington in recent weeks to improve the EU’s opening bid. But he has also had to face a counter-attack from France, which has repeatedly accused him of selling out Europe’s farmers.

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