The political climate surrounding the European Commission's proposal to reform the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) continues to improve. Consensus is taking shape about the need to discuss the issue, which is the first essential step. Only France had flatly refused to negotiate at once, for timetable reasons. But there was not even unanimity on this in France. I had already amply quoted the reasonable position, open to negotiation, of the rapporteur of the European Parliament, French national Joseph Daul (see this column of 24 September). Other stances were along the same lines (see this column of 1 October). And then the two European Commissioners of French nationality defended the reform proposed by the Commission in their own country.
Accepting the debate. Let me begin with Michel Barnier because he is personally the closest to the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister. He told the newspaper "La Tribune": "I have told my French friends that Franz Fischler hopes to preserve the CAP. But it must evolve. France must not take part in this debate with its back to the wall and on the defensive. Elections have taken place in France as in Germany. A serene, albeit difficult, debate is now possible. Last year, I explained that the CAP should be safeguarded on condition that it be allowed to evolve and taking the international context into account, with the WTO, at the same time as new requirements: food safety, sustainable development, and risk prevention. We cannot save the CAP by wanting to keep it as it is today".
A model to be safeguarded. On 3 October, Pascal Lamy spoke, in Paris, at a conference-debate on CAP, on the theme: "what is Europe's agricultural project?" He said what was on his mind in his capacity as a decision-maker for the Union's trade policy and as a "fierce defender, as is his duty, of the European agricultural model". According to this model, "deeply anchored in our history and our culture, farming is an economic sector that cannot be left to the mercy of market capitalism". Why? Because the criteria "produce ever more at less cost" has, in farming, consequences that we find insufferable. He went on to cite three reasons: the precariousness of world prices, which puts income stability of farmers at risk; the fact that the market does not remunerate the services provided by the farmers to the community (protection of the environment, territorial balance); and the fact that free access to the EU market for all the least expensive products of the world would reduce to just one million the 6 million European farms. The conclusion is simple: "this is not sustainable and does not correspond to our idea of European civilisation". The question is therefore not that of knowing whether Europe needs a public policy for regulating agricultural markets (this is already acquired) but of knowing what this policy should be. Mr Lamy went on to explain the reasons for the choices made by the Commission in the Fischler reform, to: a) break the link between direct support to farmers and the quantity produced (in order to avoid subsidies going to stockpiling, the destruction of surplus production and export aid); b) guarantee equitable incomes without altering the individual initiative and the entrepreneurial spirit of farmers by encouraging them to produce better rather than more, to receive a better price in exchange for better quality; and c) remunerate the collective services provided by agriculture, as the market alone cannot do so.
The above-mentioned guidelines "must be the subject of a political and social decision which cannot be continually put off with the excuse that now is not the right time". The only point "engraved in stone" is the European budget allocated to agriculture until 2006, and the Commission does not plan to touch it. The rest must be improved. What the Commission is proposing is a "stage, not a revolution". Delaying reform serves no purpose and is dangerous as "the debate is here and now". Could the Commission wait before making its proposal? No, replies Mr Lamy, who specifies: "I know several governments that would have liked CAP to be abolished (…). Waiting even longer would have meant running the risk of making the positions between those who are for and those who are against CAP even more radical, and reducing the debate to budgetary aspects alone".
A firm and final "no". CAP reform will, moreover, strengthen Europe's position at world level, and will determine it, as "the commitments that the EU will have to take in international trade negotiations will result from what it has chosen itself, and not from outside pressure". This warning is very timely, as the work of the WTO for preparing the "Doha Round" is not evolving at all well: Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and other third countries are calling for treatment for the agricultural sector to be identical to that given to other economic sectors. The firm and final "no" from Pascal Lamy is reassuring for the future of European civilisation.
(F.R.)