FEARS that the EU will agree to slash import tariffs on food have prompted the French Government to make a formal complaint to Britain that Peter Mandelson, the EU Trade Commissioner, has exceeded his negotiating brief.

In response to a US proposal, the EU offered this week to phase out export subsidies and cut production subsidies, reducing agricultural support by up to 70 per cent. But Mr Mandelson is also thought to have offered trading partners undisclosed cuts in tariffs for the first time.

Ministers of the leading trading nations are jockeying for advantage and preparing new concessions on farm trade for an extraordinary meeting in Geneva next week, after scheduled World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations ended without agreement on Wednesday.

The new meeting will seek to agree the basis for a farm deal to put to a full session of WTO members in Hong Kong in December, which is meant to agree all the main features of the Doha trade-opening round.

Pascal Lamy, the WTO’s new director-general, said yesterday that the talks were now moving again and stood a good chance of success. But M Lamy, a former French official and EU Trade Commissioner, made it clear that cuts in tariffs against food imports from developing countries would be crucial to a settlement.

Philippe Douste-Blazy, the French Foreign Minister, telephoned his opposite number Jack Straw yesterday to express “concern” at Mr Mandelson’s new approach.

He complained to Britain, as current President of the EU, that Mr Mandelson had overstepped his brief by offering tariff cuts “without prior consultation with member states”.

The European Commission insisted last night that it had not abused its role in the negotiations by announcing huge cuts in agricultural support earlier this week.

“The Commission has not and will not exceed its negotiating mandate,” a spokesman said. “Member states have been fully briefed at each and every stage of the negotiations. We have had at least three meetings with them this week. At the same time, the Commission’s role in the negotiations has to be respected.”

Developing countries say that a significant dismantling of farm protection must be agreed before the rest of the negotiations can go ahead.

Mr Mandelson, speaking to a House of Commons Select Committee yesterday, said that the agreement between the EU and the US to offer cuts in farm trade barriers was “an absolutely vital, if insufficient, condition for the round’s success”.

The US ended deadlock in the talks by offering to cut its limit for farm support by 60 per cent. But leading food exporters have claimed that this could leave America free to raise subsidies because it spends far less on support than it is authorised to do.

Mr Mandelson said that the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) would soon be unrecognisable, but in answer to Michael Gove, Conservative MP for Surrey Heath, he said that he was on the side of reforms that left sustainable rural communities and an agricultural base in Europe rather than eliminating protection.

Brussels officials pointed out that the cut in farm support that Mr Mandelson put on the table this week had already been agreed by EU governments as part of plans to overhaul the CAP.