On a day-to-day level, farm unions always the first to get leaks from DG Agri and are much more in touch with what’s happening than other representative organisations that are not ‘in the loop’. Sure, farm unions spend a lot more money on lobbying than other groups can afford but it is reflective of the general posture of DG Agri as an institution whose principal function is to serve farmers not the common interest.

The only two radical reform moments (under MacSharry and Fischler) were devised by small coteries of advisers very close to the Commissioner. Reform plans were by necessity kept from the mainstream DG Agri staffers as it was feared they would have tried to sabotage the reforms if they had known what was brewing. I think that tells its own story.

Jack’s criticism is absolutely relevant for most national agriculture ministers. The French one is a typical example of a captured institution, which has long forgotten the concept of general interest. But look at the recent CAP history. Council decisions have always been the outcome of a Nash equilibrium, i.e. the demonstration that the sum of individual interests almost never leads to the general interest. The Parliament has no technical expertise, its votes are unpredictable and often scary (more subsidies to cotton, tobacco, etc.), suggesting that when the EP will have co-decision on the CAP we could end up with something as bad as a US Congress designed Farm Bill (well, at least the US has the Congressional Research Service !).

Facing this, the Commission has appeared as a vector of the common interest for almost 20 years. OK, there are areas where DG Agri protects its own interests (I suspect this is why rural development remains so agriculture-oriented for example). So do DG Trade, DG Regio, perhaps in an even more questionable way (why so much insistance for defending structural funds in spite of their poor record ?). But eventually, the dialectic between DGs is such that the Commission’s proposals for CAP reforms since 1992 could pass for textbook cases of social welfare maximization under the political constraint of a dysfunctional Council and in spite of the unfriendly fire of expertise-deficient MEPs.

I have heard top civil servants from the French ministry of agriculture refer to DG Agri as ‘the ennemy’. When you are hated by these guys, by British tabloids and by farmers unions, that means you are doing an excellent job.

PS: By the way, I am not applying for a job at DG agri and I only get my research money from DG RTD.

Perhaps DG Agri should come up with a more balanced approach and also send its officials off to work with conservationists to count the decreasing numbers of farmland birds, to spend some time with developing country farmers who are shut out of EU markets or have their own markets flooded by cheap subsidised EU exports. One perspective of the CAP that DG Agri officials will never fully grasp is that of taxpayers. As employees of the Commission, they receive their salaries tax free.