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		Letter to the Editor Lincolnshire Echo - Wednesday 8th September 2004 Dear Sir, John Sharpe (letters, 6/9) has strong views -- but they are wrong views. He refers to my article on August 31st, in which I said that EU Single Market policy was a key reason why our coal industry had declined. I realised at the time that I had not set out the case in any detail, but space prevented me from doing so. EU state aid rules in the single market are supposed to prevent massive subsidies distorting competition. But a little-known provision allowing such subsidies to be phased out "over time" has been abused by successive German governments to continue to pay massive subsidies to German mines which we in Britain cannot pay to British mines. The subsidies are on a scale comparable to the cost of extracting the coal to start with, so no commercial operator can effectively compete. It is true that Conservative policies, for reasons that made sense at the time (such as, for example, not agreeing to be blackmailed by Arthur Scargill, and a determination to provide British industry with competitively-priced energy) led to the decline of the coal industry. It is also true that EU Single Market rules make British coal uncompetitive with German coal today. Mr. Sharpe would do well to stop raking over the ashes of 1980s disputes, and think about where our energy will come from in the 21st century. Yours faithfully, Roger Helmer MEP