A2 revision: clash over the CAP

The CAP is always a popular topic on the Edexcel Unit 5 paper and it is important that students are as up-to-date as possible with the debate over its future

The BBC reports today that:

‘The EU is renewing efforts to reform its Common Agricultural Policy, the rural payments system that costs more than 40bn euros (£32bn) a year.

It is due to announce proposals aimed at making farming more efficient and environmentally friendly.

The European Commission will suggest going further down a road it embarked on five years ago.

It aims to scrap milk quotas and give farmers incentives to look after the countryside rather than producing food.

BBC Europe editor Mark Mardell says the idea is to make farmers more responsive to the demands of the market - and more at its mercy.

The draft policy requires approval by all 27 EU member states and the European Parliament.

It calls for milk quotas to be raised then scrapped by 2015.

The commission wants to progressively cut subsidies to farms, and shift the money saved to protect and promote traditional family farms.

The UK has urged the EU to go much further and get rid of direct payments to farmers altogether.

But EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel says this is completely impossible politically, and our correspondent says she is probably right.’

By the UK, the BBC are referring to calls by the Chancellor, Alistair Darling. As reported on the Common Agricultural Policy blog by Wyn Grant:

‘Alastair Darling has claimed that the CAP is exacerbating the world food crisis. He is calling for the dismantling of the CAP, claiming it is costing consumers in Europe billions of pounds a year in higher food bills, while hurting farmers in the developing world.’

But this puts him at direct loggerheads with the French Farm Minister, Michel Barnier, who favours continuing the current protectionist regime. He has also been backed by his German counterpart, Horst Seehofer.

Some reform is likely, and in theory this should help limit food price increases and make a more level playing field for developing countries. But the EU is likely to erect further protectionist barriers by arguing that imports into the EU should meet strict environmental and safety standards. They already insist, for instance, that imports meet minimum standards on the chemical aflatoxin, which is said to cost African exporters of cereals, nuts and dried fruits $670 million a year.

There is a great 4 pager on the CAP from Open Europe here