Comparing the CAP with an oil tanker, the Commissioner for Agriculture Mariann Fischer Boel, attending the two-day event, said that even if a change of policy cannot be swift, we as liberals should be determined to turn it into a new course.
Referring to the resolution on agriculture review the ELDR Congress agreed to reduce the CAP after 2013 and replace it with new common food, rural and sustainable land use strategies.

The ELDR also approved an urgent resolution on the rebel clashes in the East of Congo and asks the EU to compose without delay a peacemaking force.
Regarding the current global financial crisis, Annemie Neyts referred  to the “painful missed voice of the Commission’s President” in leading the issue at a common European level. “Once more – she added – he missed an opportunity to put his Commisson in the lead of EU affairs (…) preferring to play Sarkozy as Blair played Bush’.
Referring to the free market, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who attended the Congress, stated that “what we need is not more government but better government’. ‘The free market – he continued– is not a sinking ship but it is in choppy waters and we must come to its aid. In the short term this means – paradoxically – state intervention. Public engagement has been needed to keep credit flowing’.

The election of three women to the ELDR bureau confirmed the commitment of liberals to the equal representation of women in the top jobs of the EU.

Please click here to download the adopted resolutions