Category: Blog posts

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The limits of (evaluating) rural development policies

The evaluation of rural development policies has improved over the years. The current mid-term evaluation, with all member states applying the sophisticated Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework (CMEF) underpinned by voluminous Commission guidelines, is another step forward. DG Agri is adding further tools to make evaluations even more productive, such as an Internet platform for all stakeholders involved in the evaluation process.

The philosophy of monitoring, learning and adjusting is correct – but it can lead to an excessive trust in our abilities to manage economic processes, including their social and environmental implications. We must recognize the limits of our ability to glean information about the diverse challenges on the ground, to identify the locally diverse and multifaceted effects of policy interventions, to process this information intelligently and impartially, and to draw adequate conclusions.… Read the rest

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The development angle

“Waste at home and damage abroad”. That is how one Member of the European Parliament described the common agricultural policy. Gabrielle Zimmer, a German MEP who sits on the parliament’s development committee, was speaking at a conference convened last month by the United Nations Millenium Campaign to look at the impact of Europe’s farm tariffs and subsidies on developing countries.

According to Eckhard Deutscher, Chair of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and another participant in the same meeting,

“The biggest challenge the EU’s development aspirations are facing is the lack of policy coherence. The trade, development, agriculture and environmental policies are simply out of sync with regard to developing countries.”

… Read the rest
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10 May: Sugar is sweeter

Who wants to be a farm subsidy millionaire? Quite a few, it turns out.

According to data released by EU governments – and crunched by our sister organisation FarmSubsidy.org – the number of farmers and food companies who received individual payments of more than €1m this year rose by more than 20 percent on the previous year.

Count ’em up: Germany has 268 millionaire recipients, while France has 174 subsidy millionaires, including several banana-producing companies in French overseas territories. Altogether France’s subsidy millionaires took over €1bn in 2009. Besides the sugar refiners, big payouts went to dairy processors and trading companies, as the EU increased dairy export subsidies in 2009.

… Read the rest
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Who will guard the guardians?

It is EU practice (and legislation) to subject the CAP to a sophisticated system of evaluations. For each member state’s rural development program (RDP), an ex-ante, mid-term and ex-post evaluation is being undertaken by independent bodies. Other studies, commissioned by DG Agri or DG Research, examine specific CAP instruments across Europe on a rolling basis. In addition, the European Court of Auditors scrutinizes selected CAP instruments (here you can find summaries of their CAP-related studies).

But how independent are the evaluators? How strong is their mandate? How useful are the findings? In a recent article in EuroChoices, Angela Bergschmidt, an evaluator from the Federal Research Institute in charge of agriculture in Germany, offers a bleak account:

[It is] a useless evaluation; costly, often low in scientific quality, unread and unnoticed by policymakers and the wider public.

… Read the rest
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EU boosts farm subsidy millionaires by more than 20 per cent in 2009

Today, farmsubsidy.org revealed the results of an intensive two-day harvest of new farm subsidy data published by the European Union’s member states in accordance with the new laws on disclosure of beneficiaries of EU funds.

The data, relating to payments made in 2009, has been harvested from twenty seven government websites, in some cases using advanced computer programming techniques. So far, data on 38.3 billion euros of payments have been harvested (from a total CAP budget of 55 billion euros). In some cases member states have made the data easy to access, in other cases they appear to take deliberate steps to block access.… Read the rest

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15 April: Ciolos wants to hear from YOU!

Better cancel that early summer holiday. There are just two months to contribute to the European Commission’s latest public debate on the future of the CAP.
The EU’s agriculture commissioner, Dacian Ciolos, launched the debate on Monday, unveiling an exciting new website where “stakeholders” are encouraged to share their thoughts about structure and objectives of the CAP after 2012. But hurry: the website will be open for contributions until June 2010.
“The Common Agricultural Policy is not just a matter for experts,” Ciolos said. “It’s a policy for all Europeans.” Quite so, one was tempted to add. We’re paying for it.
… Read the rest
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How much is enough?

The CAP has to respond to new challenges, and thus it needs more funding. At the very least, and more realistically, the current budget must be preserved. That is a common line of reasoning. It is also a surprisingly simple rule-of-thumb considering the eye-watering annual budget of EUR 55 billion. … Read the rest

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EP draft report: Whereas all this is nonsense

The EP own-initiative report on the post-2013 CAP is taking shape as a new draft has become available (dated 24.3.2010). Though it is better packaged, and sexed-up with a ‘green growth’ tag, the content is just as dull and conservative as the earlier draft. The report captures the intellectual deficiency of the CAP-insider bubble.

The draft report suggests 5 ‘key building blocks’: area-based direct income support, climate change mitigation payments, payments to areas with natural handicaps, payments for biodiversity and environmental protection, and green growth subsidies with a focus on renewable energy. The first two payments are to be fully financed by the EU, and the other three co-financed by the member states.… Read the rest

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Poll Shock: Europe loves the CAP!

Every so often DG Agriculture commissions an opinion poll to find out how much European citizens love the common agricultural policy. As a democractic exercise it is somewhat reminiscent of elections in the former German Democratic Republic (99 percent for the communists!). The result of these ‘Eurobarometer’ surveys, which are carried out by TNS Opinion, a reputable polling company, is never in doubt: European citizens love the CAP a lot.

Among the findings of the recently released poll are the following:

  • Nine out of ten of Europeans regard agriculture and rural areas as important for the future. I’m rather curious about the one in ten who don’t.
… Read the rest
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EP own-initiative report on the post-2013 CAP

The Rapporteur of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (ComAgri), George Lyon, has presented his take on the post-2013 CAP. Once the document has been discussed and amended by ComAgri, it will be voted upon first in ComAgri (June) and then in the EP plenary (July).

The starting point of the draft already chills expectations: “The Common Agricultural Policy has been largely successful in fulfilling the objectives it was set out to accomplish so far.”

Three groups of objectives are identified. 1) Supporting economic needs – including an EU agriculture competitive on world markets, EU food security in an unstable world context, and the valuable contribution EU agriculture and the downstream agri-food sector make to EU growth and employment.… Read the rest