It had to be the reform that made the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union not only greener but more fair and effective but, a year after its entry into force, the same countries and politicians who designed it - with France and Spain at the head, as beneficiaries of their aid – are now demanding to review and even repeal some decisions to respond to the rural protests.
The level of attacks on the CAP has reached such a point in France that the president himself, Emmanuel Macron, recently had to remember that although it would be “very easy to put all the blame on Europe”, the truth is that “without the Common Agricultural Policy our “Farmers would have no income and many of them would not be able to survive.” The statement is valid beyond the Hexagon and explains the love-hate relationship between European farmers and the acronym PAC.
Created in 1962 by the six founding countries of the European Economic Community, this policy has its origins in the economic context of food shortages that the continent suffered after the Second World War. Then it came to represent two thirds of the common budget. Its weight has reduced with the passage of time and the arrival of new partners, but today it still represents 30% of the European common fund, a total of 400,000 million euros for the period 2021-2027, of which 47,000 will go to the field. Spanish. It is the largest item in the EU budget and its oldest policy.
The objective of the CAP was to guarantee the supply of food, so Europe fully opted for interventionist policies at the level of prices and markets to guarantee supply and price stability. The policy was so successful that, in the 1980s, it began to have a surplus problem. The images of mountains of butter and lakes of wine caused outrage in European public opinion while an economic problem was brewing. In 1984, quotas and control measures were introduced to put an end to oversupply, but the price of the CAP skyrocketed as a result of intervention measures (aid for private storage and public purchases) and export subsidies, which were highly criticized outside. of Europe.
In 1992, six years after Spain joined, the CAP was subjected to its first major reform, with a strong French accent, like all subsequent reforms. The structure of payments changed to a combination of production aid and direct subsidies to farmers' income through payments per hectare and per head of livestock.
In order for activity and prices to become market-oriented, in 1999 the weight of institutional prices in the system was reduced. In parallel, the rural development policy was introduced as the second pillar of the CAP, changes that in 2003 culminated in the introduction of a single payment to farmers, conditional on environmental requirements and set based on their historical level of production. The major reform of 2013 – which eliminated milk quotas and introduced adjustments to limit payments to large farms, another recurring complaint about the failures of this policy – was aimed above all at promoting sustainability.
In 2021, the EU insisted in this direction and conditioned a higher percentage of payments on environmental measures such as incentives for “eco-regimes” or the certificate of “high environmental value” (a less demanding name), support for young farmers and, in line with the wishes of Paris, more room for national governments to implement the CAP. It was “a historic agreement”, a “good balance”, the Agriculture Ministers of the Twenty-Seven congratulated themselves at the time.
The confluence of rising raw material and energy prices, inflation and the war in Ukraine – added to the effects of new emissions limits, in some cases linked to the Green Deal, in others to previous commitments – have led to the application of the reform has been more eventful and controversial than expected. Some problems have national origins, such as the questioning of subsidized diesel in Germany or France, where the lowering of environmental requirements to access certain aid has reduced average payments, but others respond to similar complaints and protests have been widespread.
Although it represents only 1.4% of European GDP and 4.2% of employment, the strategic value and political power of the European agricultural sector has once again been demonstrated. Three days of protests in France were enough for the European Commission to agree to temporarily repeal the condition of leaving 4% of land fallow, renounce the plan to reduce pesticides and not propose emissions cuts to the sector by 2040.
At the meeting of Agriculture Ministers of the Twenty-Seven on February 26, measures will be studied to reduce the bureaucracy of the new CAP and simplify life for small farms. Adjustments, but without major changes in the general orientation. With opposite diagnoses and recipes on the right and the left, as some blame environmental requirements and others on the liberalization of markets, some political groups in the European Parliament are instead betting on an in-depth reform of this old and changing European policy. to adapt it to a more challenging global context.
