Bruno Le Maire, the French farm minister, advances a bolder argument.
To achieve accord on even a token reduction during its current stint as the Union's president, it needs support from the French on farm-policy reform and some give from the British over their budget rebate, won in the 1980s.
Time off: Pierre, who spends half the year in Brazil, tends to his organic "French cheese" farm.
Would this not get in the way of a trade deal that could benefit the vast majority of Europeans who do not farm the French countryside?
It dates back to the French Revolution, when a local farm-girl, Marie Harel, was supposedly given the recipe by an abbot from Brie on the run from a Revolutionary mob.
But Mr Chirac is determined to hang on to the benefits it gives France and French politicians, always vulnerable to the farm lobby for as long as possible.
The French have threatened to use their veto if farm subsidies are threatened.
But Mr Chirac is determined to hang on to the benefits it gives France and French politicians, who are always vulnerable to the farm lobby for as long as possible, however much this upsets his European colleagues in the process.
This adaptation of the Joseph Conrad novel, set in the present day, follows an entrepreneurial French expatriate (Stanislas Merhar) in a Southeast Asian delta village whose ramshackle farm faces ruin.
The French were prepared to compromise because back in November they had won the crucial argument to leave farm subsidies largely untouched.
Before dining on the French delicacy, learn about its origins on a tour of L'Escargot du vieil amandier, a snail farm in the northern Ventoux area of Provence, France.
应用推荐