EU criticised in Guardian, shock -- and nearly explicitly

More important emerging issues from the talks:

Brexit talks hit by row over EU subsidies for farmers

Exclusive: Brussels accused of trying to stop UK government from defending British farmers

Most unlike the Guardian to put it that way in the subheading! Normally it would be more like 'UK runs risk of food shortages by catastrophic break with EU policy'.Unusual slant here too:

 The row centres on the EU’s demand for what it is claimed would be an unprecedented commitment not to retaliate through tariffs on European goods even where it could be potentially shown that British farmers are being unfairly undercut.

'Unfairly undercut', yet!

For the duration of the current parliament, farmers will be paid subsidies at the same rate as the EU – around £3bn a year....clauses contained in the European commission’s draft legal text for a future trade deal. [include]...unrestricted subsidies, known as “green box payments”, include direct income supports for farmers that are not related to production levels or prices. They also include environmental protection and regional development programmes....The EU has over time hugely increased the proportion of its subsidies that it regards as being green box payments, often in the face of opposition from rival producers....In 2018, the US Department of Commerce imposed a 17.13% anti-dumping duty on Spanish olives claiming that they were being sold at unfairly low prices as a consequence of green box payments.

Two clauses in the EU’s proposed free trade deal with the UK would have both sides agree that such funds are not in effect price distorting and cannot be countered with “anti-subsidy proceedings nor be subjected to price or cost adjustments in anti-dumping investigations”...[legislating for the future as always] The UK negotiating team led by David Frost has in response argued that such a clause would limit the government’s ability to protect the British farming industry....

The EU has previously sought to have similar provisions, known as a “peace clause” by trade experts, inserted into prospective trade deals with Australia and New Zealand but they do not exist in any current agreements...Maria Wiggerthale, a researcher on trade for Oxfam in Germany who has studied the potential price-distorting impact of the EU’s green box payments, said: “There is no reason why there should be such an external ‘peace clause’ for the EU.

In the old days,el Grun or the Civil Service would surely have defended the EU on the grounds that these payments protect the environment, and therefore, like everything else European, must be farsighted and wise. And anyway we could still get cheap English strawberries as long as wages for the pickers did not rise.