The debate on the proposed review of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) presented by the European Commission was resumed on Monday within the Agriculture Council. The plan established under the responsibility of Commissioner Franz Fischler is well known and was analysed from top to toe, gaining much support and just as much criticism. This column has been devoted to this subject three times already - on 18, 18 and 23 July - and has on the whole reached favourable conclusions. I have nothing to add, and refer the readers back to the above articles assuming they may be interested in arguments that are not conventional.
An incoherent and often demagogical Parliament. If I am returning to this subject today it is therefore not to rectify anything in particular, but to point out that something is happening within the European Parliament. I do not have an endless admiration for the way this Parliament behaves towards agricultural issues. During many long years, a majority at the EP Committee on Agriculture systematically fell in line with the positions taken by agricultural organisations. It played more the role of spokesman for corporatist agricultural interests than that of a political body. The plenary session, however, totally lacks coherence: it votes with the same enthusiasm on radically contradictory positions, according to the nature of the point on the agenda. If one discusses relations with third countries (whether they be the least developed countries of the world, or the Mediterranean countries or those of Latin America, Asia or elsewhere), the Parliament calls for access to the European market for their exports, rants and raves about the EU's "agricultural protectionism" and in no uncertain terms criticises excessive agricultural spending in the Community budget. But, as soon as the debate turns to specific agricultural questions, the language changes. The Parliament then votes in favour of increasing farm aid and in favour of defending European production. I call that demagogy.
An eloquent example. You think I'm exaggerating? This is what the Parliament voted on 4 September just as the Johannesburg Summit on sustainable development was coming to a close. Previously, on the subject of this summit, the plenary session of the EP and a large number of MEPs individually (not only out of hand adversaries of the CAP but also Mr Cohn-Bendit, for example), had called for the EU market to be opened up to the farm products of third countries and for subsidies on European agriculture to be reduced. Well, on 4 September the plenary voted without any voice being raised in objection on the Stevenson report which called for Community support for a series of measures aimed at developing high protein plant crops in the Union. The measures recommended comprise in particular: a) increased aid to protein crops that are not covered by the Blair House agreement; and b) revision of this Blair House agreement in order to make the reductions accepted by the EU for its subsidised soya production more flexible. It should be underlined that this sector is the only one where the European Commission has advised against the development of Community production, because of its cost compared to imports. The Parliament felt that the solution recommended by the Commission to face up to the ban on the use of bone meal in stock farming, that is increased recourse to the world market, "places the EU in a situation of vulnerability and is not a lasting answer to the needs of the Union in plant protein".
Let it be quite clear: in substance, I am perfectly in agreement with the position taken by Mr Struan Stevenson recently approved without opposition by the Parliament. But I find the inconsistency inadmissible. The EU's deficit in plant protein is 35 million tonnes annually, and will get worse with enlargement. Europe has paid this deficit very dearly, as, in order to cover it at least partially, it has developed the use of monstrous methods for feeding animals with bone meal, which, as we all know, gave rise to the mad cow disease. It is imperative for Europe to improve its miserable rate of supply autonomy, an operation whose cost (including for research and development) will be infinitely lower than that of the BSE at any rate, and will be precious also for cereal crop rotation, for the restoring of pastures in hills and mountainous areas and for relaunching traditional protein and oilseed crops on fallow land. It is painful to see that the same Parliament which takes a stance along these lines, continues at the same time to call for Europe's agricultural market to be opened up and for agricultural spending to be reduced. Which brings me to the Fischler plan.
A turning point in the EP's attitude. Joseph Daul, Rapporteur on the Fischler plan and Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture (as well as being a farmer himself), has drawn up a proposal for a resolution. This text marks, I believe, a turning point in the attitude of the Committee chaired by Mr Daul for several months. No demagogy and no opposition in principle to the Fischler plan, as one might have feared considering Mr Daul's origin policy (he was elected on RPR lists in France), and the fiercely negative attitude taken by the French government. The Parliament is, on the other hand, invited to caution the general approach taken by the European Commission, that is, the system of aid solely to income unconnected to production, with specific supplements for rice, durum wheat, protein crops, nuts and high energy crops. Mr Daul shares the opinion whereby the intervention regime must be "reconverted into a safety net". These changes to the current system, however, he says, presuppose that a certain number of conditions have been met. In particular:
- basic aid (guaranteeing stability of income for small farmers) should be completed by the "second stage of support" intended to support the economic-productive function; and
- transformation of the intervention system must be accompanied by sufficient border protection to maintain the stability of the EU's internal markets given the price and currency fluctuations on international markets. There is, in fact a "certain danger of destabilising the European markets if prices and import volumes remain out of control, and a danger of unfair competition if these imports do not meet environmental criteria or the requirements of quality, food safety, health protection and animal welfare imposed on Community farmers". Border protection must "guarantee the defence of production and spatial planning models that are characteristic of European farming, as well as internal price stability".
One farmer who has understood. Mr Daun regrets the lack of specific proposals aimed at meeting the growing deficit in plant protein (the Commission, by giving its preference to extending imports "contradicts its will to develop diversified agriculture more compatible with the environment") and confirms what Mr Fischler had already said about the future negative impact that the "Everything Bu Arms" initiative would have on European rice production. One important aspect is that: Mr Daul never takes the defence of "export refunds". This is an aspect of CAP that must be phased out entirely. But it takes courage for a farmer to admit it.
I shall not go into details on the other aspects of the Daul proposal which covers the Fischler plan as a whole. It takes up the principles already solemnly affirmed by the EU, but too often forgotten, whereby: agriculture must remain multifunctional, sustainable, competitive, and distributed over the whole of the European territory (including regions with specific problems), and it must be able to preserve landscapes and the natural area and meet the demands of consumers as far as quality and safety are concerned. This means that the Commission should receive a new mandate for the next international negotiations so that non-trade considerations may be recognised: - market opening must be made subject to social and environmental criteria, in respect of binding international agreements on social norms, the management of natural resources and food safety.
No one knows what will remain of it. I have dwelt on this proposal of resolution as I do not know what will remain of it after it has gone through the Committee on Agriculture first of all and then the plenary session. Only the future knows. The very fact that this text exists is in itself encouraging. The danger is that a certain number of MEPs do not yet know how to make a distinction between the CAP on one hand (which must be rid of the elements that give unjustifiably large incomes to certain categories of farmers or which finance large exporting businesses more than the real producers) and, on the other hand, European agriculture, which must be safeguarded. When I read the recent communique from the president of the Radical MEPs, Maurizio Turco, I am flabbergasted. It wants to know from the Commission the cost of the EU's protectionist agricultural policy in terms of loss in export receipts from the less developed third countries. It would, I feel, be of more interest to reflect upon the affirmation by Franz Fischler whereby the opening of European agricultural markets would result in the disappearance of six million farms in the EU, out of the seven million that exist today. Does Mr Turco realise what this would mean for Europe? Desertification of most of the territory, tens of millions of people flooding into towns to swell the already desperate population of the suburbs, the loss of Europe's food autonomy and no longer being able to help out with our surpluses when famines occur elsewhere, the end of agricultural traditions that are sometimes thousands of years old, and the ruin of farmers in our old Europe … In exchange for this disaster, farmers in poor countries would not be better off. On the contrary, opening up the European market would have the following results for them: diffusion of monoculture for export, the mass arrival of multinationals and of large-scale traders, which flair the possibility of invading the rich and solvent European market (they are already preparing for this), and abandoned attempts at restoring food crops in order to feed the local populations …
Is this how the EU should help the less developed countries?
(F.R.)