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To an audience of interested people from the European Commission, European Parliament, NGOs, diplomatic missions, and news organizations, Jack Thurston and Ken Cook provided an update on their work uncovering the recipients of U.S. and EU agricultural subsidies.

Cook, head of the U.S.-based Environmental Working Group (EWG), and Thurston, a GMF Transatlantic Fellow who is helping lead the European initiative on freedom of information (FOI) regarding Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies, made a case for helping citizens and journalists figure out where their tax money is going.

"In the United States, 10 percent of farms get 70 percent of subsidy payments while sixty percent of farmers in the United States receive no subsidies at all," said Cook, whose organization runs a website with searchable data on recipients, even down to individual names and zip codes. Cook said the site will be updated with 2004 data in the next week.

Thurston, who was instrumental in getting subsidy data released in the U.K., announced a website, www.farmsubsidy.org, which will be launched soon with data from several European countries in a format similar to that of the EWG. He has been helping coordinate an EU-wide network trying to get the farm subsidy data from EU member states. Thurston said FOI has been an "effective political tool" for mobilizing a debate on the objectives of farm policy and that the campaign is starting to raise eyebrows with stark figures showing that 80 percent of CAP money is going to 20 percent of farmers. His work is complimented by a new transparency initiative by the European Commission with the goal of involving all the stakeholders in a debate on how to improve transparency on "the Community Funds."

Terry Wynn, a British Member of the European Parliament, introduced Cook and Thurston by praising their work and encouraging more cooperation. "It is incumbent upon all of us who want to see more transparency to take action," Wynn said.