At the sixth meeting of the International Forum on Agriculture and Food1 in October, EU Commissioner for Agriculture Mariann Fisher Boel presented a policy reform project for the Common Agricultural Policy, which emphasized the lack of strategic vision by the European Union on agriculture.
This project consists of radically simplifying the way in which the CAP currently operates, along three lines.
Mariann Fisher Boel first of all proposes to replace the 21 existing Common Market Organisations (CMOs) with a single one that would be based on general management principles of the agricultural markets. It is highly likely, however, that this single CMO will be less effective than current methods in dealing with problems that are specific to each sector.
She goes on to propose a "health appraisal" of the CAP reform in 2008, in order to discuss the future of a certain number of measures, which, she believes, "make the CAP more complex". In reality, however, this appraisal aims to:
› disconnect farmers’ incomes from the market by eliminating partial decoupling and introducing total decoupling;
› dismantle the latest agricultural market regulatory tools by eliminating production quotas.
Finally, she is looking towards globally reviewing the European Union budget for the period after 2013 by initiating a process of reflection based around three key questions:
› What budget should be put aside for financing the CAP?
› How should the CAP be financed and what role will direct payments play in its funding?
› Should the European agricultural model turn towards a single model that uses total decoupling, as currently favoured by the European Commission?
It is vital that thought is immediately given to the future of the CAP for the period after 2013 since, as emphasized by Mariann Fisher Boel: "If we don’t write the script, others will do it for us". This must not, however, lead to dismantling the CAP, which is what binds Europe together, in order to reach a final WTO agreement, the benefits of which are increasingly doubtful for most developing and developed countries.
1 Initiative from Coldiretti, the Italian farmers’ association |