*** JEAN-MARIE SERONIE: CAP and globalisation. Still a common European policy? Editions Quae (c/o INRA RD 10, F-78026 Versailles Cedex. Tel.: (33-1) 30833406 – fax: (33-1) 30833449 - E-mail: serviceclients@quae.fr- Internet: http://www.quae.com ). 2018, 172 pp., 16.50 €. ISBN 978-2-7592-2809-6.
An agricultural engineer and chartered accountant who has devoted his career to accompanying farmers, which he still does today as an independent agricultural economist, Jean-Marie Séronie is devoting this book to a subject that will obviously stimulate debate and passion in the capitals and countryside of the European Union in the coming months. What, in other words, should be the fate of the Common Agricultural Policy, this “Green Europe” which, he observes from the outset, “has gradually become almost unreadable in its purpose but also completely exhausted its means”?
To try to see clearly, the author wanted to physically and symbolically go back to the beginnings: it is from the Grand Hotel of the Borromean Islands that he begins his story, from this emblematic place of the Belle Epoque where the Stresa conference in July 1958 laid the foundations of the Common Agricultural Policy as it was to be concretely created in 1962. From this place and this atmosphere which has led “evidently” to “one of the binding elements of the European construction”, the author seeks to clearly describe the rise in power of green Europe, then its gradual descent into hell because of the difficulties it has encountered “to adapt to globalisation”, then, he insists, even though agriculture now has “a real strategic dimension and even becomes for Europe, in the perspective of a world population exceeding ten billion inhabitants, a major geostrategic issue”. How did he end up missing the boat so badly? The explanations he gives show a very obvious French sensitivity, but when he describes the “years of euphoria” of the 1960s and 1970s, then the 1980s, which were years of “patching up”, the “great openness” of the Mac Sharry reform of 1992, the years 2000 to 2020, during which the Common Agricultural Policy became “increasingly vague”, he also quotes and explains developments that have weakened it in the context of globalisation and an ever-expanding European Union, while the “competitors of Europe”. Just look at how the Commission's latest proposal for CAP reform was received last week in the European Parliament and you can see how explosive the issue is.
Jean-Marie Séronie's entire reflection aims, against this backdrop, to consider whether the Common Agricultural Policy should, beyond the reform proposed by the Commission in 2020, the end of the Union's current budgetary programming period, be subject to a revision as radical as that imposed by the Commission in 1992, when the “gradual withdrawal of public authority from market management” was begun. He is also trying to discern what France's position could be in this matter, since it has “for thirty years (...) had great difficulty navigating negotiations by means other than a presidential chin, which is clearly no longer the Brussels 'modus operandi'”. To see clearly, the author immersed himself in a few reference texts, but above all met political, economic, trade union, entrepreneurial, diplomatic, research and lobbying actors to develop his own diagnosis. It has to be said that it is not optimism that prevails in her case. Thus, with regard to the budgetary reform of the CAP advocated by the European Commission in June 2018, it notes that the budget for 2027 would, at constant prices, be about 15% lower than in 2020 and that, in the future, “the Union's action would be limited to the choice of major common objectives”, which would leave each capital a very large freedom to decide on actions contributing to Community objectives. Worse still, the implementation of environmental policy would be completely delegated to the Member States, leading him to wonder whether “a more technocratic than political ambition” in the Commission headed by Jean-Claude Juncker would not lay the foundations for a “creeping renationalisation”, which would further increase the risk of achieving a “total and irreversible renationalisation” of agricultural policies.
All this leads him to cry wolf and plead in favour of launching a “real reform”, worthy of the name, which would become the priority of the next Commission, with 2024 as its operational horizon. Choosing the path of “increased subsidiarity” would, according to him, be the easiest way, the stakes of the current needs of agricultural transitions - the agro-ecological transition, climate change management, support for the modernisation of companies, the structuring of modern sectors able to better organise production, “the foundation of a truly common policy for agricultural risk management” - would seem to him however a much more virtuous path in the long run. But wouldn't that require some kind of new “founding conference” of Stresa to rethink everything? Not sure that many capitals are politically willing to do so...
Michel Theys
*** HELLE TEGNER ANKER, BIRGITTE EGELUND OLSEN (under the direction of): Sustainable Management of Natural Resources. Legal Instruments and Approaches. Editions Intersentia (Sheraton House, Castle Park, Cambridge, CB3 0AX, UK. Tel.: (44-1223) 370170 – fax: 370169 – Email: mail@intersentia.co.uk – Internet: http://www.intersentia.com ). European Environmental Law Forum Series, No. 5. 2018, 257 pp., 65 €. ISBN 978-1-78068-759-9.
This book reports on the fifth Conference of the European Environmental Law Forum through the eyes of specialised lawyers at this meeting organised at the University of Copenhagen. The aim was to highlight various key issues concerning legal instruments and approaches to promote sustainable natural resource management, this horizontal dimension being the subject of the first contribution signed by Helle Tegner Anker (University of Copenhagen) and Birgitte Egelund Olsen (Aarhus University). The first part of the book is mainly devoted to the specific action of the European Union, in particular as regards the ambitions and coherence of its environmental legislation in relation to its ambitions in terms of sustainable management. For example, Ludwig Krämer, a former official of the European Commission, examines the fate of the Member States in relation to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and argues that in different areas, such as biodiversity, water and air for example, clear progress could be achieved. Taking an interest in the external effects of the Union's natural resources such as forests and fisheries and wondering to what extent it could also contribute to the construction of more sustainable and resilient societies beyond its borders, lecturer Wybe Douma is hardly more enthusiastic, arguing in particular that the coherence of European policy “would benefit from the formulation of an EU strategy on external aspects for sustainable management of natural resources rather than the ad hoc approach applied so far”. The same rather negative tone is also evident in the case of researcher Luchino Ferraris, who, examining the possibilities for judicial review of the environmental performance of the Common Agricultural Policy, asserts that the “greening” promised by the latter has ended up being more an instrument to support incomes than a means of achieving ambitious environmental objectives.
One of the innovative aspects of the approach undertaken by the members of the Forum is to have broadened the spectrum from “natural resources” to “recycling of waste”. The whole third part of the book is devoted to this subject, but once again especially in the light of the European Union's actions. Thus, Pr. Katerina Mitkidis (Aarhus University) and researchers Shona Walter and Viktoria Obolevich deplore the lack of a comprehensive legal framework for pharmaceutical waste management, arguing that one way to overcome the inherent complexity and scientific uncertainty of pharmaceutical waste is to take sustainable, precautionary and life-cycle-oriented measures. The same disillusionment with the way the Union acts for soil protection, another area where a legal framework is lacking. The fourth part of the book is devoted to two aspects of environmental and climate litigation, the next two being followed by ecosystem approaches and adaptive management, as well as various specific aspects such as, for example, “reflections from the Arctic” on indigenous peoples' rights to natural resources. (PBo)
*** HesaMag. European Trade Union Institute (Working Conditions, Health and Safety Unit, 5 bld. du Roi Albert II, B-1210 Brussels. Tel.: (32-2) 2240560 – fax: 2240561 - E-mail: etui@etui.org - Internet: http://www.etui.org ). 2018, No. 18, 54 pp.
Published in English and French, the 18th issue of this publication of the European Trade Union Institute contains a very rich dossier devoted to work-related cancers which, for too many years, have been the subject of an astonishing and scandalous omerta. Coordinated by Denis Grégoire - who is leaving his position as editor-in-chief of the journal - and Laurent Vogel, this issue highlights the particular experiences of people who, to varying degrees, have dared to break the silence around their illness, knowing that 8% of cancer deaths in Europe are directly related to work. It is also explained that the European Trade Union Institute's action to ensure that occupational exposure limit values are adopted for carcinogens present in a large number of companies produces positive results, but that this is by no means a panacea: in far too many companies, basic safety and health protection rules continue to be violated, with violations of the law remaining unknown and unpunished in the vast majority of cases. In addition to this dossier, a severe look is also taken at the “The world of EU lobbying in Brussels”, in particular in the light of the “Key players in the corporate lobby defending glyphosate”. For Olivier Hoedeman (Corporate Europe Observatory), “A fundamental problem behind the privileged access enjoyed by big business lobbyists” is namely “the widespread belief in neoliberal ideology within the EU institutions”. Hence its conclusion that “until EU decision-makers stop conflating the interests of big corporations with those of the public, profit will come before climate and public health”. The magazine also invites, in an editorial, looking without turning away from the fate of African day labourers working in southern Italy. (PBo)
*** Futuribles. Anticipation in the service of action. Futuribles Sarl (47 rue de Babylone, F-75007 Paris. Tel.: (33-1) 53633770 – fax: 42226554 - E-mail: revue@futuribles.com– Internet: http://www.futuribles.com ). January-February 2019, No. 428, 160 p., 22 €. Annual subscription: 115 €. ISBN 978-2-84387-441-3.
This issue of the French prospective journal contains a remarkable report on the brain and the promises it now embodies. As Hugues de Jouvenel points out in the editorial, it reveals the “exceptional capacities of the brain to learn, including from its foetal life”, while also highlighting the most favourable conditions for learning. The kingpin of this intellectual work, Prof. Jean-Pierre Bellier (University of Bordeaux) explains in his introductory contribution the technical progress that has made it possible in recent decades to better observe and understand this organ, as well as those that have opened up new perspectives in brain research and even the hybridisation of human and artificial intelligence. This Inspector General of National Education in France highlights in particular the challenges inherent in the progress of cognitive sciences, neurosciences and their contributions to education and learning, his message summarised by Hugues de Jouvenel being that “education is not about filling a bucket, it is about lighting the fire”. These issues and potential contributions are precisely at the heart of this first round of contributions. This issue also discusses a passage “from a circular economy to an integral ecology”, the philosopher Dominique Bourg (University of Lausanne) pleading the cause of a real challenge to our system of production-consumption and lifestyles and calling on public authorities to act in order to impose on citizens the changes required to preserve the general interest of humanity in the long term. Finally, while Pierre Bréchon reviews the evolution of Ronald Inglehart's theory on the rise of postmaterialism over the past fifty years, the traditional “European Tribune” sees Jean-François Drevet grasping the possible Brexit under “the constraints of association with the European Union”. (MT)