PETER MANDELSON won wide-ranging support from within the European Union yesterday as he prepared to lead the EU’s negotiating team in a series of crucial meetings in the next few weeks to liberalise world trade.

After briefing foreign ministers on the EU’s proposals to cut agricultural tariffs made at trade talks in Doha at the end of last month, the European Trade Commissioner said: “Having made this offer, Europe is in a much stronger position to negotiate and unlock the talks.”

He predicted that the EU’s main trading partners would press hard for further concessions on access for farm products in the run-up to the World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in December. But he added: “This I will not give.”

Only France, Europe’s largest agricultural producer, with some support from Ireland, Greece and Cyprus, struck an openly hostile tone over the proposals. Philippe Douste-Blazy, the French Foreign Minister, repeated Paris’s view that Mr Mandelson was overstepping his mandate and said that it might veto a final deal.

Earlier, Mr Mandelson had tried to head off the inevitable French criticism by telling ministers: “I understand the pressures that member states face from lobbies and NGOs. But succumbing to those pressures weakens our credibility, and therefore our negotiating position.”

He also said that failure to have improved the EU’s opening gambit on cutting agricultural tariffs ten days ago would have had extremely damaging political consequences that would have been “unsustainable” for Europe.

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