Agriculture and Food Minister Mary Coughlan said yesterday in Dublin she was put under "personal pressure" from US multinationals to moderate her stance in support of import levies for the European market in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations.
Ms Coughlan is leading the Irish delegation to the WTO ministerial talks in Hong Kong in a fortnight's time. "I have been put under personal pressure on this by the US to ease off," she told a meeting of the National Forum on Europe.
The Minister was addressing the forum on "The Common Agriculture Policy and the Doha Development Round of Trade Talks".
Speaking to The Irish Times afterwards, she said it was not the US government, but multinational corporations, who let her know they felt she had taken too strong a stance in relation to the EU's negotiating position and the more accommodating approach of Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson.
"The problem is that both myself and the French were seen as being difficult when we expressed concerns at the [ EU] General Council meeting that the Europeans had worked without their mandate. Now we have a re-affirmation that that has not happened.
"But that being said, there are difficulties in the US, where people feel that I am being intransigent in my view and therefore that I need to ease off. I don't believe I need to. I think there can be a balanced approach to all of these issues."
Asked what was the origin of the pressure, the Minister said: "The pressure was coming from the fact that we have a lot of inward investment in this country, for which we are thankful and benefit from but, at the same time, my view is that that issue should not be a pre-determinant of undermining agriculture."
The pressure had not come from the US embassy but from large corporations: "Their view is that I am being unhelpful within the European context and WTO, in other words, that I was pushing our commissioners too strongly, similar to the French, on agriculture, most particularly on market access.
Director of Trócaire Justin Kilcullen criticised what he saw as a lack of progress by the WTO in addressing "market distortions" arising from trade restrictions and subsidies.