Is the Common Agricultural Policy indispensable for the future of Europe ?

Résumé du document

The CAP has long been a stumbling block among EU members. Last year, Jacques Chirac strongly opposed Tony Blair's proposal about the CAP. Indeed, France is the country which receives more agricultural subsidies while the United Kingdom does not get any concern in the agricultural policies. The Common Agricultural Policy is a typical European item, given that the Rome Treaty, signed in 1957, holds that the European Economic Community should lead common policies concerning agriculture. In the 1960's was created the first organization dealing with agriculture, the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF). Nowadays, agriculture has remained a central topic, giving that the regulation dealing with agriculture stands for half of the European global regulation. First of all, it seems useful to indicate what the CAP is. Article 33 of the European community holds that the CAP aims at boosting the agricultural productivity, providing farmers with an "equitable income", ensuring the supply of fresh products to European countries and reasonable prices for consumers. No one can deny that those purpose are all the more well funded as when the Rome Treaty was written, European farmers could not meet the European demand of food. Moreover, helping farmers was necessary because they stood for a large part of the European labor force.

Extraits

[...] One the one hand, it would be a good news, because the reductions of CAP expenditures will provide sums which could encourage countries to further integration on subjects such as the industrial policy, innovation, research, One the other hand, it could endanger the European farmers and the supply of food on the old continent. Is the CAP indispensable for the future of Europe? Will EU be able to cope with mounting CAP expenditures while most countries (France and Germany in particular) prove to be reluctant to increase their expenses? One can also wonder if the concept of multifunctionnality is relevant, or if it is just a strategy to justify protectionism Plan I. The CAP, a necessity for the European agriculture? A. [...]

[...] The agricultural sector is often blamed for being very costly. Indeed, the CAP expenditures stand for about 45% of the EU budget. One can stand that subsidizing agriculture is unfair competition. It is all the more a strong argument that the incomes of the farmers are higher than the average income. For instance, in 1990, the average income of a French household was Francs, while the average income of a farmer household was Francs. Nevertheless, the agricultural sector has many specificities: Low profits deter people from becoming shareholder of a farm. [...]

[...] Moreover, the CAP has to play a role in modernising agriculture and developing rural areas in former communist countries. Granting farmers in those countries would lead them to modernise their capital and to lead to a rise in the size of holdings, which would break up with an archaic way of cultivating crops. Nevertheless, some points have to be changed. The actual form of the CAP would not last forever. I think that decoupling has some virtues, because it reduces the distorting effect of the CAP. [...]

[...] The mad cow disease, due to the massive use of “animal flours” to feed animals proved that farmers were more concerned in increasing their productivity than in taking care of the quality of their products. There is no doubt that the mechanism of the Cap encouraged those abuses. Indeed, the more the farmers produced, the more they got subsidies from the CAP. In a way, the only means for farmers to increase their incomes was to increase their production. But after 1997, food safety became one of the major concerns of the politicians in Europe. [...]

[...] Those principles deal with food safety, protection of animals and plants, pollution This policy could be effective, because the market mechanism will be better respected than with the principle of fixed prices. Moreover, it tackles the issues raised by the WTO and makes the EU less likely to be condemned for export subsidies. The project of minister of agricultures was to allocate more sums to rural development. Indeed, Single Farm Payment will reduce sums allocated to export subsidies. Money thus would be allocated to rural development. Nevertheless, many farmers complain about the decoupling. The reform of the CAP implies that farmers will receive levels of subsidies related to those before 2003. [...]