At the same time, Halonen said that the agricultural industry and trade should be made fairer within the EU. She said that Britain's most recent proposal of agricultural reforms is old-fashioned.
Halonen says that every country has the right to produce food. However, developing countries must also be able to compete on international produce markets. Current levels of government subsidies to European farmers unfairly undercut developing countries' produce.
Kiviniemi's Cautious Approval
Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Mari Kiviniemi says the limited deal hammered out by world trade delegates in Hong Kong will offer a basis for future talks on a free global trade treaty.
She described the outcome, however, as a controlled failure. Kiviniemi said that progress needs to be made particularly in liberating trade in industrialised goods and services.
World trade delegates agreed on a series of steps to improve trade between rich and poor nations. They saved long-running global trade talks from collapse on Sunday with an interim deal to end farm export subsidies by 2013 and open up rich-country markets to the world's poorest nations.