MR Padraig Flynn, the European Commissioner for Social Affairs, plans to attack European Union tobacco subsidies today, arguing they compromise its anti-smoking drive and give its critics ammunition.

He will urge his colleagues to phase out production subsidies in an effort to forge a coherent policy as part of a long battle to cut tobacco-related deaths in the Union, officials said.

"Of perhaps greatest concern is the fact that the existing policy on tobacco is used to attack and discredit Commission policy more generally," Mr Flynn argues. However, he is opposed by the Agriculture Commissioner, Mr Franz Fischler, who argues that EU member-states would never agree to such a radical proposal and that ending subsidies would not curb smoking since the vast majority of tobacco used in the EU is imported.

"If we make a very radical proposal, we end up with the status qua because it won't go anywhere," a Commission agriculture source said, noting that eight EU countries produce tobacco.

Mr Flynn's paper will be discussed during a debate by the 20-member Commission today over the future of EU subsidies to tobacco farmers.

The debate is planned to guide the Commission as it draws up two policy papers - one on tobacco farming to be drafted by Mr Fischler, and one on initiatives to cut tobacco consumption to be drafted by Mr Flynn.

Mr Flynn complained the EU paid almost 993 million ECUs (£763 million) to support tobacco production in 1995, while devoting only 15 million ECUs a year to discourage smoking.

The EU produces only 5.4 per cent of the world's tobacco, but Commission agriculture sources said cutting off tobacco subsidies would put 135,000 farmers and many seasonal workers out of work. EU farmers grew tobacco on small plots averaging one hectare that could not be easily devoted to other crops, they said.

Italy is the EU's biggest tobacco producer, followed by Greece.

A Commission agriculture source said Mr Flynn's spending comparisons were unfair because they did not take into account national spending on public health programmes.

Mr Flynn's paper concedes the EU would have to provide "large-scale" financial assistance to help the tobacco sector adjust if it abolished subsidies. But he says the quality of FU tobacco was, on average, so low that its commercial value was only one-fifth of the subsidies that were used to grow it.