With the Health Check out of the way, it looks as if the medium-term future of the CAP is going to be strongly influenced by discussions of how the EU budget should be spent. This always raises the awkward question of the opportunity cost of spending large sums of money on subsidising farmers.
One external study has concluded that the CAP could just as well be paid from national budgets as the EU budget in terms of its European added-value. (For the study go here) This study seems to have influenced the viewpoint of EU Budget Commissioner Dalia Grybauskaité. She told Agra Focus that there will be massive poltical pressure for the EU to concentrate its policy spending after 2013 on areas where there is a genuine added-value at EU level, e.g., a common policy on energy or climate change.
The Commissioner described 1st pillar CAP funding as ‘generally the largest and most costly EU policy which, under each reform has got more and more expensive and less and less efficient’. She also questioned whether agriculture policy is still a ‘common policy’. When the EU was created there were questions of hunger. But that has changed and ‘we are now fighting with over production and with price crises for food and agricultural products’.
Another argument for co-funding – which already happens in the new member states – is the casual attitude she has witnessed from some member states to various EU-funded projects – as demonstrated by poor controls and the likely increase in sums received under the ‘clearance of accounts’ procedure. As soon as national/regional funds are involved, the relevant authorities are more focussed and responsible for an efficient use of public money, she argued.
It is true that neither CAP reform nor budget reform can pursued without having the other in mind, but one also needs to be cautious here. The more I follow this debate, the more I get the impression that budget people use the CAP as an excuse for non-reform (and vice-versa). The more you hear it, the more I see this as an excuse for blame-avoidance.
The fact is that when you look at the Health Check but also at how the 2002 CAP reforms were undertaken, you find that little concern is given to budgetary implications. Having worked for some time on budget policy, I have learned that reforms start in their relevant policy field but definitely not at the level of the budget people.