Franz Fischler said what was on his mind, and we thank him for it. Having announced that in a few months' time, he will no longer be responsible for agriculture in the EU because he will no longer be a European Commissioner (speech of 15 January to Berlin's "Green Week": see our bulletin of 22 January page 4), he criticised the lies about Europe's agricultural policy, stressing three points:
1. CAP today is totally removed from its origins. Mr Fischler said: "scarcely a stone has been left unturned in agricultural policy". In the post-war years, the main thing, quite logically, was to produce as much as possible, because infant malnourishment and nutritional diseases were rife. But once Europe was able to feed its population, change was needed because intensive production was causing "environmental damage and desolate landscapes, beef, cereal and butter mountains, and enormous trade distortions on the world markets. In the early 1990s, CAP was still marked by a rigid, production-oriented subsidy policy. And so began our "Long March" away from support for over-production towards a market-oriented, environmentally-friendly scheme geared to performance". The Commissioner gave a long list of changes made: an end to the mountains of highly expensive and unusable stocks, production which is no longer determined by subsidies but by consumer demand, abolition of bonemeal-based animal feeds, etc., allowing him to conclude: "the face of agricultural policy has changed radically". We can see what merit is deserved by those who attack today's CAP for its past performance, from which we have already moved on. Even the mad cow crisis has had some positive effects, because it allowed us to "realise that farming contrary to the laws of nature and to human and animal health, blindly maximising production, simply backfires".
2. The "immense cynicism" of certain NGOs. Mr Fischler said: "I am strongly against the sledgehammer propaganda put forth by some NGOs. It is quite simply misleading to weigh agricultural subsidies in the industrialised countries against the disposal income of people in the third world. Of course it is a luxury that we can afford public funds for the environment, animal welfare and stewardship of the countryside. Just as it is a luxury that the developed world shells out million on noise protection walls, carving skis and Christmas tree money which would keep the least-developed countries going for years. This type of debate does not help the developing countries one iota. It is extremely cynical to suggest that the EU just has to sacrifice its farmers and paradise will descend on the third world".
What is really helpful to poor countries? Franz Fischler sums this up in three points: reduce agricultural subsidies which create trade distortion, reform the agriculture policies of America and other countries, and reserve special treatment solely for developing countries. He added: "this is precisely what the EU proposes".
3. EU expenditure on reformed CAP is justified. The Agriculture Commissioner called for the "precise budgetary framework of agricultural expenditure until 2013" which was laid down by the Heads of Government of the Union in October 2002, to be observed, "warning against re-opening Pandora's box and pulling the rug out from under the reform". This is not merely because what has been decided should be stuck to, but also because the planned expenditure is justified. Mr Fischler explains: "to denounce spending half the EU budget on agriculture in times like these misses the point completely- because agricultural policy is the only EU policy that is funded almost exclusively out of the EU budget and not the Member States' budgets. And while public spending in the Member States has risen steadily over the last few years, expenditure on agriculture has decreased steadily in real terms. In 1993 we were spending 0.61% of the EU's gross domestic product on our agricultural policy, whereas today that figure is 0.43%, and in 2013 it will be only 0.33% of GDP". If we reduced the CAP budget, the Member States would have to take up the slack and instead of a common policy, we would have 25 national policies competing with each other, and the internal market would disappear! This is why Mr Fischler stressed that cosmetic budget debates take us nowhere.
This speech, a real "farewell" from the man in charge of European agriculture, deserves a few comments; these are for tomorrow.
(F.R.)