With the Slovenian Presidency of the EU barely a month old, the French government is already limbering up for its defense of the CAP during the Health Check and the budget review when France takes the helm of the EU in the second half of 2008. Farms minister Michel Barnier is here in Brussels all this week along with his ‘B-Team’: a 22-strong crack unit of Paris-based diplomats and civil servants on a mission to familiarize themselves with EU institutions, places and faces and to plot with old allies in the battle against reform such as those reactionary dinosaurs at COPA-COGECA and their more youthful offspring.… Read the rest
Getting decisions on the Health Check
With 27 member states the whole negotiating process in the Farm Council has become a lot more difficult, not that it was ever easy. Another complication is that fisheries matters are also dealt with in the Farm Council and this means that the December meeting is the scene for an inevitable battle between fisheries ministers over quotas.… Read the rest
Goepel plan: weak, weak, weak
The European Parliament’s agriculture committee published a working paper on the CAP health check at the end of last year. Tamsin Cooper and Martin Farmer at IEEP have already argued that from an environmental perspective it lacks ambition and is internally inconsistent. I have looked in detail at the working paper’s proposals for ‘progressive modulation’ which is put forward as an alternative to both the Commission’s proposals on payment limits and increased compulsory modulation.… Read the rest
Forging the link between the Health Check and the Budget Review
The CAP Health Check has been promoted by the Commission as an exercise focused on tidying up the loose ends of the 2003 Mid Term Review and adapting the CAP to an evolving set of circumstances for the period 2008 – 2013. However, this is only half the equation. The Budget Review is set to open up a much more fundamental debate on the rationale for European expenditure on agriculture, and in doing so will delve into the very heart of the CAP. … Read the rest
Public supports 'consumer agenda' in farm policy
A new survey of public opinion released today by the German Marshall Fund of the United States shows strong support for ‘consumer agenda’ in EU and US agriculture policies focused on food safety, the environment and the food supply. There was significantly less support for producer-oriented priorities like providing emergency financial relief to farmers, insuring farmers against unpredictable market conditions and preserving small family farms.… Read the rest
Commission proposals lack ambition
Later today the European Commission will present its proposals for changes to the Common Agricultural Policy – for so long an emblem of bureaucracy, waste and injustice. This will be the first reform since details began to emerge from top secret government files about exactly who gets what from the €55 billion Europe spends each year on farm subsidies. After a landmark FOI case by The Guardian in 2005, revelations about farm subsidies paid to the Queen (£466,667 in 2005), the Duke of Westminster (£526,136) and Sir Richard Sutton (£917,650) hit the headlines across Europe.… Read the rest
European Agriculture: un tour d’horizon
The debate over the future of the CAP will begin in earnest next week with the Commission’s proposals for the ‘health check’. Just in time comes an excellent new website that offers a view of the agricultural situation in each of the 27 EU member states. This is a much needed resource that combines official data and expert analysis in a readable and analytically comparative way. It is an excellent factual companion for anyone looking at the diversity of European agriculture and the different policy paradigms that prevail across the EU. … Read the rest
Why agricultural policy reform is so difficult
Over on the excellent VoxEU site, Thomas Hertel, Roman Keeney and Alan Winters try to answer the question why agricultural policy is so difficult to reform, as illustrated by the way in which difficulties in getting agreement on reduced agricultural support and protection has been one of the factors preventing progress in the Doha Round. They take issue with one justification for preserving rich countries’ agricultural protection that it helps poor farmers in the North while the benefits of liberalisation would go only to rich farmers in the South. … Read the rest
US Farm Bill: the gloves are off
Will we in Europe soon be watching TV commercials like this one that is currently airing in the United States?
IEEP briefing on the CAP Health Check
An excellent briefing document on the likely direction of the CAP Health Check – and the political forces at play – has been published by the Institute for European Environment Policy (IEEP). To my mind it is the best overview available at this time and I’m delighted that IEEP experts Tamsin Cooper and Martin Farmer have recently joined the CAP Health Check blog. Read it here (PDF). There is also a short update following the leak of a DG Agriculture draft of the proposals due in November 2007. … Read the rest