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The Common Agricultural Policy Health Check: time to check the health of the theory of the reform?

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Abstract

In 2008, the ministers of agriculture of European Union member states made a political agreement on the Common Agricultural Policy reform, also known as the Health Check. The reform coincided with three things: the ongoing Doha round of the World Trade Organization negotiations; political pressures to limit the costs of the policy financed from the common budget; and various ‘new’ policy issues. Rational institutional and constructivist approaches, which are often viewed as theoretical alternatives with each explaining some aspects of the reform, have employed simplified and narrow abstractions in conceptualising the role of these policy contexts. In order to identify the mechanisms facilitating the Health Check, a critical realist approach is proposed here, arguing that the relationship among the trade negotiations, budget bargaining, new issues and the policy reform can be explained by theoretically endorsing the asymmetrical development of the agricultural production factors and of production relations. A qualitative analysis is used to determine which of these three approaches seems to be better able to explain the empirical evidence.

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Notes

  1. The total EU budget accounted for €126.5, which is no more than 2 per cent of the EU's public expenditure.

  2. If the German industrialists pressured for the establishment of the common market, the CAP was in the interest of the French agricultural producers (Moravcsik and Schimmelfennig 2009: 77−8).

  3. The MacSharry and the Fischler reforms, which introduced substantial policy changes, were contained within CoAM, while the moderate Agenda 2000 reform was decided by the European Council, thus opposing the widely held view that substantial reforms were inhibited by the compartmentalisation of EU agricultural policy-making under the auspices of the CoAM (Daugbjerg and Swinbank 2007: 6, 17).

  4. Pokrivcak et al. (2008: 9) have noted the problem of descriptive elements and eclecticism of the rational institutional approaches towards the CAP reforms. Reflecting on the theoretical approaches towards the various EU enlargement related issues, Anne Faber (2009: 24−5) observed that although the analytical and descriptive capacities have become ‘highly developed’, their explanatory value remains ‘comparatively low’. Several methodological problems related to the constructivist approaches have been noted as well (Erjavec et al. 2009: 42, 47; Erjavec and Erjavec 2009: 219).

  5. In URAA, red, amber, blue and green box (headings) refer to types of supports and their estimated economic effects.

  6. Personal communication with a policy specialist employed in Directorate General Agriculture (September, 2008).

  7. Personal communication with an analyst working in an EU-based policy-oriented think-tank (January, 2009).

  8. The suckler cow and sheep premium payments will be the only formally coupled payments remaining in 2013.

  9. Personal communication with a policy specialist employed in Directorate General Agriculture (September, 2008).

  10. Personal communication with a policy specialist employed in Directorate General Agriculture (September, 2008) and with an analyst working in an EU-based policy-oriented think-tank (January, 2009).

  11. ‘Give me my money back’ is a statement made famous in the context of the CAP by the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who, due to the UK's CAP budget deficit, by using these exact words, successfully claimed a financial rebate.

  12. The UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Germany, also known as the ‘reformists’ and who were financing the CAP extensively already, opposed extending direct payments to the new members. The other major group of old members (also known as the ‘conservatives’), who wished to retain the direct payments in the long run, argued that the mechanism should be made eligible to the new members. Since the reformists, especially Germany, were also strong supporters of the enlargement, they backed down subsequently.

  13. In 2007, the total EU budget was €126.5 billion.

  14. The agreement on the 2007–2013 MFF was formally made in December 2005 during the British presidency (Daugbjerg and Swinbank 2008: 6). The agreement introduced a small reduction of the CAP budget which was more significant in the second pillar.

  15. Personal communication with two agriculture ministry officials, one from an old and one from a new member state (November, 2008).

  16. The amount of funds would increase from half a billion in 2010 to €1.16 billion in 2012.

  17. Personal communication with agriculture ministry official from a new member state (November, 2008).

  18. The underdeveloped productions structures have been reflected by the structural pressures. Since 2003, the number of agricultural households in the new member states has declined by 46.6 per cent in Estonia, 44.2 per cent in Bulgaria, 34.4 per cent in Latvia and 30.7 per cent in Poland (Eurostat 2011).

  19. Personal communication with a policy specialist employed in Directorate General Agriculture (September, 2008).

  20. Personal communication with two agriculture ministry officials, one from an old and one from a new member state (November, 2008).

  21. In 2008, each German citizen contributed €52 for CAP, each Italian €36, each British citizen €20, and each Dutch citizen €142. The French CAP budget surplus divided per citizen was €17, in Spain it was €46, and in Greece €202 (Commission 2008a).

  22. Personal communication with a policy specialist employed in Directorate General Agriculture (September, 2008).

  23. In the short term, both the supply of food and of fuels are relatively inelastic. The situation was worsened by the speculative capital placing bets on the ability of the developing and the developed regions to pay even more for these essential commodities.

  24. ‘I want a new CAP, because our farmers should be able to make a living from the prices they are paid for their produce, their production and their work by means of real EU market stabilisation policy. … France must produce more. … I believe in the free market economy. But competition should be the same for everyone. We will take a Community initiative to step up controls at the European Union borders to ensure that imported agricultural and food products are up to those produced in Europe. We cannot keep inflicting environmental dumping, social dumping, fiscal dumping and now currency dumping on our agricultural businesses’.

  25. Since the potential decrease of the costs due to a decrease in the production was not taken into account, the compensations in fact established new financial privileges (Schrader 2000: 232). In the case of the milk quotas, the production levels were under the quota levels in several member states.

  26. This explains the difficulties of Committee of Professional Agricultural Organisations, General Committee for Agricultural Cooperation in the European Union (COPA-COGECA) representing the farmer's unions and the cooperatives organisations on the EU level, with the articulation of the common interests of the EU agricultural sector.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the blind peer reviewers for their constructive critique.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Marko Lovec

  2. Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Emil Erjavec

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  1. Marko Lovec
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Lovec, M., Erjavec, E. The Common Agricultural Policy Health Check: time to check the health of the theory of the reform?. J Int Relat Dev 16, 111–137 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/jird.2012.14

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