Cyprus to get cheap grain as US wages subsidy war on Europe

CYPRUS is to reap the benefits of a “barley war” being waged between the EU and the US.

The US Trade Department announced earlier this week it was to subsidise exports of home-grown barley to Norway, Algeria and Cyprus as a counter- measure to the EU subsiding exports of barley from within the community to the US last month.

Thirty thousand tonnes of cheap grain — mostly destined for animal feed — are to be sold to the three counties under the US Agriculture Department’s (USDA) export enhancement program (EEP).

“The US will use the EEP to respond to the EU’s heavily subsidised sale in April of barley to the US,” said US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky in a statement in Washington publicised yesterday.

Barshefsky described the EU subsidies as an “ill-considered action” and the EEP subsidies as an “appropriate and necessary response.”

“This use of EEP is a measured, targeted response to the EU’s recent sale of heavily subsidised barley into the US,” said USDA Secretary Dan Glickman added. “Our action today demonstrates how seriously we view the EU sale.”

It was not clear yesterday how much barley Cyprus would import from the US under the EEP.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.