The impacts of the common agricultural policy (CAP) in France

Résumé du document

The CAP is often considered as a debate of the specialists since this is a very complex and technical topic, but nowadays there is a huge public debate on this policy which is one of the most important European policy and also one of the most expensive one. In May 2006 there was the biggest reform of the CAP with the adhesion of ten new countries which means there will be a new evaluation of the agricultural expending. This concept risks in restoring tensions between the Great Britain which wants to reduce its contributions and France which is largely been benefiting from this policy. Indeed, CAP seems to be too costly, it takes 40% of the European budget whereas there is only 2% of GDP and 3% of the active population concerned. The CAP is mainly based on measurement of subsidies in order to modernize agriculture.

Extraits

[...] There was a need for the countries to develop their agricultural production in order to guarantee the food supply but also to restore their trade balance. There were in Europe, in the six countries, a very important agricultural diversity but there were also some common interests. We'll see further that France have particularly interest in the policy and that this country is the main winner of the CAP. The functioning and the mechanisms of the CAP The CAP is built on several key principles. [...]

[...] An improvement of the living condition for the agricultural actives The improvement of the living condition in agricultural area was one of the first goals of the CAP and this point was realized. The modernization of the agricultural sector was a way to live better for several reasons. First of all the working conditions was very hard before the mechanization of the agriculture, the improving of the facilities and the equipments have facilitated the life of the farmers but also permitted to improve the capacity of productions. The agricultural actives earn more money with the CAP since 1960: we can clearly see a rise in agricultural revenue. [...]

[...] In 1999, there is a support for the rural development. This reform aims to prepare the entry of the ten new countries and to make compatible the CAP with the WTO rules. In 2003, the Luxembourg Agreement (lead by the commissioner Franz Fischler) aims to be conforming to the WTO constraints. The CAP introduces the decoupling of the subsidies (which means that the farmers have not to produce to have subsidies). The decoupling subsidies are given if the farmer respects some agricultural and environmental conditions (well fare of the animals, respect of the environment and landscape, and so on). [...]

[...] The Mac Sharry Reform is often considered as a revolutionary reform. The policy of support made by the community is reoriented and the guaranteed prices come closer of the world rate. There is also a first step toward an environmental policy. It's for the cereals production that the reform is the more important: there is a significant decrease in the “prix administer”. Moreover the set aside is generalized and there are new subsidies to “compensate” the effects of the reform in the production. [...]

[...] The first measure took to solve this problem is the measure of the in 1984, especially concerning the dairy area (where the issue is the most worrying). But the quotas in the dairy area cause some very bad consequences for the economy and for the farmers. There is a domino effect after the measure. Indeed the surpluses move from an area to another. The dairy producers redeploy themselves in bovine meat production (they've already had cows) and there are surpluses in this production (in 2 years, one millions of milky cows are killed). [...]