THE Head of Delegation of the European Commission to Zimbabwe. Ambassador Xavier Marchal has urged the country to take advantage of EU initiatives to avert an impending ‘humanitarian disaster’.
Speaking at the 65th annual congress of the Commercial Farmers Union, Marchal said the “Commission, as most here know, has remained ready to engage with Zimbabwe on land and agriculture, on a ‘give and take’ basis. But without a ‘give’, there cannot be a ‘take’.”
Marchal also urged the negotiating teams in South Africa to reach an “Agreement which is legitimate, which is respecting rather than violating again the will of the Zimbabwean people, and which can be endorsed by the European Union.”
He urged the Zimbabwe government that comes out of the negotiations to engage positively with the EU to ensure that food security is guaranteed in the country.
Marchal said the new Minister of Agriculture’s first call should be to the EU to expand and strengthen current initiatives. “One of the first telephone calls of the new Minister of Agriculture could be to the European Commission, aimed at serious business,” he said.
“We could then quickly move towards implementing the 10th European Development Fund, of which one of the two focal sectors is focused on land, agriculture, food security, and environment,” said and added that the “amount to be dedicated to this would be around 50 million euros.”
Ambassador Marchal also urged Zimbabwean authorities not to wait, but engage the EU now by using existing initiatives, like the EC funded Sugar Adaptation Strategy (aimed at bringing sugar production to world class standards), implementing the “vast EC funded Stabex programme, through the main Unions, the CFU, the ZFU, and the ZCFU” and by taking full advantage of “significant and unused possibilities offered by trade relations”.
He urged Zimbabwe to come up with a Business Plan (BP), based on clear principles, that addresses the following: genuine agricultural policies, real purpose of land reform (not patronage), symbiotic relationship between farmers of all size and race, and which receives full support of the EC and the international community. Marchal said the BP should ensure that “problems are transformed into opportunities”.
The 65th CFU Congress brought a lot of optimism in the country as it was the first time in a long time that the State and the CFU publicly engaged each other in a constructive manner. The relationship between the two sides has always been acrimonious.
