As Brussels begins tense talks to hammer out a deal for the 2014-2020 EU budget, Portugal’s Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho will push the European Council to increase funding for rural development by €900m, rather than reduce spending by 25 per cent, as is currently proposed. He will argue the country is one of states which benefits least from Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) handouts.
Portugal’s task will not be easy, since "the environment in which Passos Coelho will try and make his argument that agriculture creates jobs, is one of an increasingly less unified Union".
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