The differences of opinion over the figures had almost been overcome. There are an increasing number of eye-witness accounts confirming that the breakdown of the summit over the forthcoming financial perspectives of the EU was no accident. Last Friday night, the differences of opinion over the figures had almost been overcome. The efforts asked of Tony Blair over the British rebate had been radically reduced, the guaranteed amount having been considerably increased and the degressiveness eliminated until at least 2013. The additional effort announced by the countries of central and eastern Europe (which are prepared to give up a proportion of the funding in their favour) would have been enough to please most of the Member States still insisting on an additional reduction of their contribution. But Tony Blair said no. Rumour has it that Jean-Claude Juncker told a few of the Heads of Government who were trying to persuade the Presidency to have one last try: "there's no point, they haven't come here to negotiate but to block". And Mr Blair himself confirmed this interpretation, by saying that what was proposed to him "was not the kind of budget he wanted for Europe". In the end press conference, Mr Juncker said that the call to change the very structure of the Union budget in a couple of hours meant soliciting failure.
Building without demolishing. Tony Blair is certainly not wrong when he says that the Union budget should give greater sway to research, innovation and education, which are priorities if Europe is to be made competitive at a global level. The Juncker compromise would involve the total revision of the new research programme proposed by the Commission and currently being discussed by the Parliament; this is a problem that needs discussing. But what is behind Mr Blair's attitude is starting to look like a willingness to demolish the two most community-based, ambitious and structured policies, the cohesion policy (which the British view of things wanted to boil down into a cheque for the least-favoured regions) and the agricultural policy (see this column yesterday). This justifies the statements from French, German and Belgian sources, repeated in the press conference by the President of the European Council, that London's ultimate objective was to abandon any moves towards a political Union and Europe as a power in its own right. Even the European Commission ended up rallying to the Juncker compromise (see this column in bulletin 8970), with only two Commissioners out of the 25 (according to information available) believing it to be unacceptable, because it did not give enough weight to future-orientated policies. All the others could agree to the effort required of them.
Two debates already cut and dried. The debate on keeping a genuine Community cohesion policy in place had been held well before, firstly within the Commission and then at the Council, with the active and impassioned participation of the regional and local authorities of the Member States; and the result was a firm yes to this policy. The debate over agriculture was longer and more arduous, and is far from over, due to the confusion subsisting between the CAP (which is susceptible to permanent revision) and safeguarding agricultural activity in Europe. The CAP has been a source of abuse, distortion and fraud, and the farming community was wrong to defend all aspects of it, including the least defendable bits. But the reforms (all of which have been carried out against the opinion and the wishes of the agricultural organisations) have cleaned it up and changed it sufficiently, by bringing in the principle that any payment of European aid is subject to the observation of strict rules on the environment. The CAP is becoming more and more like a tool for the indispensable protection of European agriculture, by moving further away from just defending the producers.
The link between research and agriculture. It just remains for me to stress the link between the revised agricultural policy and research. The protection of the environment, the authorisation or ban of genetically modified organisms (GMO) and food safety, depend more or less directly on research. A research policy developed to the detriment of agriculture would be entirely without logic, because its objectives relate not only to economic productivity but also to the protection of the environment and the improvement of the standard of living. It would be utterly absurd to let agricultural activity stagnate in the name of research, because agriculture (and I am now quoting from a Commission official) is "the very fabric of European civilisation, a rampart against decline, corruption, the rural exodus, mushrooming urban sprawl, shanty towns, crime, violence, drugs". My sentiments exactly. (F.R)