New threats are casting a cloud over future prospects for European agriculture. And it is disconcerting to point out that they are coming from the European commissioner for agriculture and the ministry of agriculture of a member state. Two key personalities who should, in principle, be supporting, improving and protecting farming in the Union. I have not changed my mind about the progress accomplished over the years with regard to gaining a better understanding of what agriculture means for Europe; this understanding has been improved and strengthened, Community institutions have often adopted positive attitudes and a substantial number of farming organisations have ceased defending certain abuses that occurred in the past. CAP reforms have been positive overall. People are beginning to increasingly realise that agriculture is not just a purely commercial issue, and that Europe's food autonomy depends on it, as do its food quality, nature protection, traditions and landscape and the territorial balance of member states. This is being taken much more on board than previously. But there are some down-sides.
Commissioner for agriculture doesn't believe in it. Mariann Fischer Boel is undoubtedly aware, overall, of the importance of the sector she is responsible for and has demonstrated this in certain regards. She has been very firm in defending the EU's commitment to guaranteeing reasonable funding for the CAP up to 2013, and she's committed to ensuring that this commitment is respected. She does, however, give the impression that everything is temporary and that the reflection planned for 2009 will lead to the abandonment of mechanisms and principles that currently underpin the CAP. Reforms are definitely indispensable; it's a permanent process. But the commissioner seems to doubt the permanence of expanding European agricultural production in Europe. Her projects and ideas appear to be based on the conviction that Europe will not avoid the total opening up of its borders to agricultural products from outside the Union, and that it should therefore get ready for producing less and less and importing more and more. Europe will remain competitive for certain luxury products but won't be able to compete with the emerging giants like China and Brazil. It is true that Ms Fischer Boel wants European farmers to be able to avoid being reduced to poverty, and has proposed that they have assurances on getting a minimum wage even if they produce nothing. She is also calling on them to consider farming as second job and prepare themselves for working in other jobs.
The recent proposal on the organisation of the fruit and vegetable market is instructive. She is stresses the requirement that Europeans consume much more fruit and vegetables than they do today; this would be good for one's health. Several aspects of the document are also positive; enhancing the role of producer organisations, reducing the removal of surpluses from the costs of CAP (to prevent farmers from artificially inflating products that don't sell), encouraging the distribution of seasonal surpluses to schools, school holiday camps and cafeterias. However, what Fischer Boel's plans really mean, beyond the worthy intentions, is: total cross-compliance of EU subsidies with production. The existing link between payments and levels of product will be eliminated. Payments will be identical for production or non-production; b) the relationship between import policy (from third countries) and internal policy will be ignored. Any “Community preference” will subsequently be scrapped. Big trade interests will therefore not hesitate to accentuate their trend to import whatever from wherever, with the only criteria being one of price. Quality will become secondary, thousands of different varieties of fruit and vegetables will be condemned to disappear. What counts for the big distribution chains is to fill up the shops at the best possible prices.
Responsibility will lay with political authorities. There is also a danger that some fruit and vegetable producers will not be opposed to such a project because there is no reason why the average farmer in general is less selfish than other professions. He will have his whole subsidy guaranteed whatever kind of production or non-production he is engaged in, and a lot of farmers might be satisfied with that. Take any other profession at random, tram drivers, for example. Tell them that in their city there will be no more tram routes for them to drive their trams but that they'll get their wages until retirement anyway, and they'll accept the deal straight away. They are not going to fight for their tram ways. A lot of farmers will see things the same way. Tomatoes, onions and garlic from China? Sugar, chickens and oranges from Brazil? It's just too bad that in the meantime, these world giants are going to multiply the categories of production that are on the point of invading the European market. It is true that several of these kinds of imported products are of excellent quality (meat from Brazil or Argentina, for example) and that some third world countries are as careful as Europe or sometimes even more so in the way they ensure the quality of their products.
Ecological disasters will, however, in certain cases, be frightening - in Europe (due to the disappearance of some of its farming activities) and in the exporting countries (due to the artificial expansion of certain kinds of production in suspect conditions). Nonetheless, the fault for this will not be left to European farmers to rectify. It will be the political authorities that will have to deal with the problem. These leaders, while the EU still has a Common Agricultural Policy (for how much longer?), include, in pride of place, the European institutions. To begin with, Mariann Fischer Boel is just about to introduce indications about import policy regarding her “fruit and vegetables” project, maintaining Community preference and the war on fraud (which too many traders are guilty of committing).
Disaster beckons. Whatever happens, a core of European farmers will exist, who are proud of their farm production and its quality, and who will keep certain traditions alive. But these will be luxury products, the remainder (I'm speaking in general terms, not just about the specific case of fruit and vegetables) of the European countryside will become to a large extent a desert. Europe will add food dependency to its energy dependency, which will become subject to all kinds of blackmail. The abandonment of its rural areas will provoke the decline of small and medium-sized towns, resulting in further expansion of the suburbs of the major metropolises. The end of civilisation, the end of our civilisation.
The draft reform for the European fruit and vegetable market (reform that is necessary but which should be reviewed) can be added to other symptoms of the same source. I am referring to Ms Fischer Boel's speech, which called on farmers to prepare for no longer working full time and instead, exercise other complementary occupational activities. Such a parallel should not be excluded or condemned. This already exists in some EU zones and could be further developed. But to present this as inevitable for all farmers, and suggest that farming cannot exist or develop as an exclusive activity, is, in my opinion, inconceivable. The contrary is required: give dignity back to this activity and make it attractive, encourage the young to embrace it and have to confidence to take up the challenge by highlighting product quality and security, further strengthening the protection of geographical denominations, fighting fraud and focusing on ecological requirements and the protection of animal welfare.
Another element is also essential. In principle, the same standards should apply to imported products. This is not the direction official Europe is going in, as indicated below.
Does the UK want to leave CAP? A minister for agriculture, David Milliband from the United Kingdom, calls on the EU to make a commitment (in order to facilitate a successful outcome to the Doha trade negotiations at the WTO) to getting rid of all CAP subsidies and import tariffs before 2020, preferably sooner, according to an exact timetable (EUROPE 9337). It is true that the EU should play a role in helping to obtain a successful outcome to the Doha Round and the commitments that it has offered to other participants already go a very long way. It should also, in my opinion, make a definitive commitment to getting rid of export subsidies (with a binding calendar, insofar as they are not wanted by certain importer countries).
But what is demanded by Mr Milliband, directly relayed at the European Parliament by the Conservative, Syed Kamall, is quite simply the end of the CAP. It is true that his formula corresponds to a British economic and political tradition that needs to be understood. The basis of the Commonwealth system of trade was, to be brief, quite simple: the United Kingdom imported raw materials and food products from countries outside Europe and sold these countries industrial and processed products, without having any limits or duties on any of the trading parties. It proved very difficult for the United Kingdom, when joining the European Union, to finally give in to Community rules on agriculture: what battles there were at the time, to conserve certain import facilities for products from New Zealand, Australia, Canada or India! And what battles have followed to reduce “Community preferences”! Part of the British political class believes that the time has come to definitively eliminate these preferences. Do British farmers, who in the shadow of the CAP have been able to develop their activities, agree?
If this is the wish of the government and British people, the solution is simple: the UK can leave the CAP. It will be complicated to arrange but not impossible. And the CAP will be able to survive.
(F.R.)