It is pure serendipity that the 50th anniversary of the CAP’s founding coincides almost exactly with the current 2 500th issue of Agra Europe.
Certainly the launch of Agra Europe, in February 1963, was a direct result of the creation of the new agricultural policy among the six founding member states of the then European Economic Community.
The British creators of the new news service had expected the UK (from whence it expected to draw its initial subscriber base) to join the EEC soon afterwards, and were more than a little distressed when French President de Gaulle vetoed Britain’s initial application around the time of its first issue.
It took another 10 years before the UK did join its continental neighbours, together with Ireland and Denmark, around the Council table in Brussels. But by then two things had happened. Agra Europe had developed a comprehensively international readership (which it retains today); and the CAP’s foundations had already been laid by the Six, in the absence of any Anglo-Saxon or Nordic influence.
This fact lies at the root of the apparently ineradicable North-South fault-line which runs through European agri-politics to this day. The number of member countries in the EU has tripled since 1973, and it now incorporates Mediterranean island states and former Communist countries alongside the founder members for whom the Brussels-Luxembourg-Strasbourg axis formed a geographical as well as a political centre of gravity; but the CAP remains essentially a Franco-German construct.
It is easy to criticise, or poke fun at, the endless squabbles between member states over the direction of the CAP and over the formulation of legislation to govern European agriculture. A memo on the Commission’s “50 years of CAP” website notes, rather archly, that agreement to go ahead with an integrated EU agriculture policy in January 1962 was achieved only after “the first European agricultural marathon”.
Such epic-scale Farm Council meetings have punctuated the CAP’s history ever since. Veteran CAP followers carry memories of bleary-eyed 6am briefing sessions like badges of honour; and the June 2003 meeting at which the current CAP was formulated essentially lasted for three weeks (albeit with two weekend breaks in between). One senior Commission official used to rate upcoming Council meetings on the basis of how many clean shirts he was planning to bring with him.
Diversity and devolution
Nevertheless, perhaps the most remarkable thing about the CAP is that it functions at all. A single legal framework, and a single subsidy regime, applies right across Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea, and from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Circle. It applies to a massive diversity of climates, terrains, political and economic cultures, farm structures and farming traditions. How can a single policy apply to such a heterogeneous collection of EU member states?
The answer, which is not widely acknowledged in Brussels but which is nevertheless clear from an examination of the evidence, is that the Common Agriculture Policy is now in fact less “common” than at any previous point in its existence. It has become a kind of ‘menu’ from which member states choose options, some of which are core, others of which are more discretionary.
This has always been the case in Pillar 2 of the CAP, where decentralised administration is a key feature, and member state governments have always been charged with drawing up their own national rural development programmes (and co-financing them from their national exchequers). But it has also become an increasingly prominent feature of the direct aid schemes which currently make up, in budgetary terms, around 90% of Pillar 1.
It is of course the switch away from market support and towards income support – the key policy evolution of the 1990s and 2000s – which has made this devolution of power possible. As long as the focus was on market support – a single market being supported by a single support price – then that price clearly has to be set at the same level throughout the EU (although that principle, back in the days before a single currency in Europe, created its own nightmare bureaucracy in the form of the parallel economic universe that was the agri-monetary system).
However, when support to the farm sector is administered by means of direct payments to individuals, then an infinite number of variations can start to be introduced.
The downside is that diversity and flexibility are largely incompatible with another oft-stated political objective for the CAP, which is transparency and simplicity. The CAP is not going lend itself to being summed up on a sheet of A4 paper any time soon.
Controlling the CAP budget
Another consequence of the switch to direct aid payments as a core form of support for the CAP is that the budget can be managed with more certainty than previously.
In the past, CAP spending tended to spiral when adverse market conditions prompted heavy intervention buying or large-scale export subsidisation. Today, the Commission has clear visibility over how many farmers have entitlements to how much aid, and can thus pre-plan its spending with some precision.
This is the main reason why CAP spending has tended to stabilise in recent times, taking some (but not all) of the political heat off the policy in terms of its demands on taxpayers. After more than doubling in the 1980s, the CAP budget rose by 67% in the 1990s, but by only 26% in the 2000s – during a decade when the number of member states almost doubled.
In essence, however, the CAP has survived for 50 years primarily because the Europe’s political leaders have, in the main, wanted it to. In some member states the CAP is hailed as Europe’s finest achievement – the only area of the economy where all aspects of regulation have been fully integrated in a unified policy (other than monetary policy, which only applies to 17 of the 27 member states, and which few would currently take as being a source of great pride).
Some see it as better than any of the alternatives, or a necessary evil, while others profess to see it as something of a monstrosity – but abolishing the CAP has never been on any realistic political agenda. It has however been reformed to the point where a time-traveller from the 1970s or 1980s would scarcely recognise it, and this gives an important clue to its political durability.
Often under duress, sometimes kicking and screaming, the CAP has evolved to adapt to changing circumstances, and when necessary it will do so again. Whether its centenary in 2062 will be reported in the 5,000th issue of Agra Europe, however, remains to be seen.
This is an edited version of an article which appeared in the 2,500th issue of Agra Europe
