The Reform of the EU Common Agricultural Policy – ‘Game’ of Contradictory Interests

The 2nd of the CASE European Seminars series will be held at the premises of Bank Handlowy w Warszawie, Leopold Kronenberg Conference Room, 7/9 Traugutta St., Warsaw.

Speakers:

Jan Mulder, Member of the European Parliament (ELDR group, The Netherlands), Member of the Committee on Budgets, Substitute Member of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development;
Waldemar Guba, Senior Expert with Policy Analysis Unit at the Foundation of Assistance Programmes for Agriculture (FAPA).

Moderator: Katarzyna Zawalińska, CASE Economist.

Reforming the CAP has always been a difficult issue (the first attempt was the Mansholt plan in 1972) from several perspectives: economic, social and political. The difficulty stems from the fact that the reform is perceived as a ‘game’ of contradictory interests (and to a lesser degree as a matter of common interest or common future) where some players loose while other win. However the shape of the game changes with time: until recently it had been played by the EU-15 countries, and now it includes competition between the current members and the new candidate countries as well as between agricultural producers and the EU consumers (taxpayers) and the EU countries versus the rest of the world.

The Enlargement process had in this respect a positive impact on the EU as it enforced reforming the CAP before new members are accepted (because the policy acceptable for the EU15 occurred unsustainable for an EU25), but at the same time it created new challenges to the reform: now it has to satisfy more countries (national interests) which makes it even harder than before.

Thus, the question arises what the net effect of Enlargement on the speed and shape of the CAP reform will be? It depends to a large extent on the new members’ contribution to the reform. This in turn depends on whether the new member states are going to join the camp of the current CAP reformers (e.g. Germany) or that of the CAP defenders (e.g. France). It seems that answering this question would help to predict in which direction the reforms will go – towards redistribution of the agricultural budget or towards real reductions in the CAP spending - and how far-reaching and how quick the changes are going to be.

From the point of view of an applicant country, such as Poland, the interesting questions are, how significantly our country will be able to contribute to the reform and which reform scenario would be the most beneficial for Poland in the medium-term perspective.

Suggested points to be addressed by the speakers in their presentations:

What is the optimal path of the CAP reform: gradual reforms or a shock therapy?
How to define the parties in the controversy about the CAP reform (smaller countries versus larger countries, richer versus poorer, old members versus new ones?)
What is the expected role of Poland in this process?
What are the Polish interests in reforming CAP?
What will be our bargaining power?
How important the pressure of the public opinion (tax payers and consumers) in reforming CAP will be (in such matters of reducing cost of the current CAP or increasing a food safety, etc.)?
Where is the limit of social acceptance for the current CAP in the enlarged Union?