Europäische Agrarpolitik (German Edition)

EM Germany Weekly Round-Up | week ending 19/06/2015

---

In future, consumers will be able to contact national data protection agencies to claim their rights Die Welt. However, this is linked to lengthy trilogue negotiations. In interior affairs, ministers have provisionally accepted the system of allocation for refugees. Despite efforts from all sides, a solution still could not be found. During an appearance after the negotiations, interior ministers from France, Italy and Germany stressed the common representation of interests.

Nevertheless, it still seems like an obligatory acceptance quota does not stand a chance Deutsche Welle. A four-meter-high border fence between Hungary and Serbia also does not help to bring an agreement any closer EurActiv. The Agriculture and Fisheries Council also met this week and in particular negotiated reform of the EU-Eco-regulation.

This includes improving consumer protection relating to organic food. However, there are still over applications for amendments from MEPs on the table. Any sign of weakness towards De Gaulle, argued the German ambassador in Paris, would be likely to raise the cost of the concessions that the five would have to pay to secure France's return Akten The so-called 30 'Luxembourg Compromise', which ended the French boycott, documented the disagreement over what to do in the event of major conflicts in the EU rather than resolving it: On the financing of the CAP, the agreement reached corresponded fairly closely to the French government's aspirations Marjolin There were no changes in the treaty of the kind that De Gaulle wanted to secure at the outset of the conflict.

However, in practice, to the extent that unanimous voting on fundamental issues remained the norm in the EU during the following two decades, the French government also won the struggle over the constitution of the EU The creation of the CAP in the first half of the s was a politically highly charged process, in which each new policy step unleashed a crisis and France and Germany repeatedly found themselves in opposing camps. In the first two cases portrayed here, the conflicts between France and Germany were mediated and landmark decisions adopted; in the third, the crisis remained unmediated, plunging the young community into a crisis which was defused only by an 'agreement to disagree' after a six-month stand-off between France and the other member states as well as the EU institutions.

What is most striking about the cases is the extent of the divergence of the initial French and German positions and, more so, the extent to which the conflicts were dominated by their antagonism. In the first two conflicts, the two countries whereby France was supported strongly by Holland represented the two poles, the most extreme positions on the political spectrum, among the member states; in the third, the cleavage ran rather between France, on the one side, and all the other member states, including Germany, on the other.

In the first two cases, once the conflict between France and Germany was settled, so, too, practically, was the conflict within the Community as a whole. When, as in the third case, France and Germany could not reach a modus vivendi , a resolution of the conflict between the Six was not possible either.

Thus, the big battles over the creation of the CAP in the first half of the s seem to confirm the hypotheses that when Franco-German divisions on a major agricultural policy issue have not been overcome, the EU is deadlocked and that when they have been settled, the Franco-German position is taken over by the EU as a whole. As there was no case of both states opposing an important agricultural policy proposal, the hypothesis that, in these circumstances, the proposal will fail altogether can be neither confirmed nor refuted.

How plausibly can, by contrast, other models of EU governance account for the pattern of outcomes of the crises concerning the creation of the CAP? The neo-functionalist model emphasizes the centrality of supranational institutions. Of these, however, only the Commission itself played a significant role in these conflicts.

Nothing suggests that these organs played a more important role in the battles over the common cereal price and the financing of the CAP later on. The neo-functionalist case rests wholly on the role in these events played by the Commission. The Commission did secure the adoption of its proposal concerning the common cereals price, but the fact that this was set halfway between the existing French and German prices suggests that, here too, considerations of political feasibility influenced the Commission's stance more strongly than any 'autonomous' Commission ideas as to the 'best' common price In the conflict with France, the Commission, with its bold proposals, seems to have suffered a comprehensive defeat that braked the integration process for the following two decades.

All this is not to say that the Commission was not a critical actor in these conflicts, least of all in the one, but its role was that of a mediator, arbitrator and broker rather than an autonomous supranational agency and when it became too ambitious, as in , it was cut down to size. The transnational exchange model does not aspire to explain what "specific rules and policies" are adopted in the EU, although the proponents of the model subscribe to the intergovernmentalist view that the larger member states, because they command "greater resources", tend to exercise greater influence on policy outcomes than the small Stone Sweet and Sandholtz In general, the model predicts that political integration will take place fastest in sectors which exhibit the highest levels of cross-border transactions trade.

That is why the EU has moved further towards supranational governance in issue-areas relating to the internal market than, for example, in foreign and security policy Stone Sweet and Sandholtz However, given that agriculture was a sector where there had been very high trade barriers and relatively limited inter-state trade in Europe before the s, the model can not easily explain why political integration should have started earlier and proceeded faster in this sector than in others. Although Stone Sweet and Sandholtz Of course, it might be argued that the CAP was engineered by two member states - Holland and France - that wanted to be able to sell their surplus agricultural production on other West European markets and that, at least indirectly, the CAP was the product of pressures exerted by 'transnational society' in this case, export-oriented farmers in the two countries.

But the member states whose agricultural sectors were less competitive were equally hostile to agricultural trade liberalisation, so that what has to be explained in the conflict over the foundation of the CAP, and what the transnational exchange model can not account for, is why the former group of member states got the better of the latter.

The multi-level governance model likewise fails to deliver a plausible retrospective interpretation of the political struggle over the foundation of the CAP. Although the Commission played an important agenda-setting role, given its exclusive right of policy initiation according to the Treaty of Rome, the competence to make decisions lay fairly and squarely in the council, that is to say, it was shared between the national governments and not between national and supranational actors.

There is no powerful evidence of the Commission - and much less of other supranational organs - having exercised an independent influence on council decisions. The available literature does not enable a judgement to be made over the extent, if any, to which national interest groups bypassed their own governments in trying to influence the outcome of the conflicts. Lindberg reports that the Commission actively tried to integrate agricultural interests into the process of developing the original CAP. However, it is apparent that the Commission encouraged the formation of a European-level farmers' organisation COPA , presumably to have a single interlocuteur for agricultural policy issues and to avoid the need itself to have to aggregate the interests of the different national farmers' organisations Lindberg The national farmers'organisation most hostile to the CAP, the German, clearly - and rationally, given the unanimity decision-making rule in the council - concentrated its efforts to prevent or shape the CAP on its own national government: Finally, at this early stage of the integration process, national sovereignty had not been eroded to the degree where threats by national governments - or at least France - to withdraw from the organisation were no longer credible.

An epistemic communities-based explanation of the foundation of CAP would have to identify a network of professional experts and show that it had dominated the decision-making process. In the case of agricultural policy, this could only be the profession of agricultural economists. However, the agricultural economists have always been sidelined in the EU agricultural policy-making process.

Far from having been the policy's architects, they have typically been critics of the CAP and its 'economic irrationality'. To this extent, there are no similarities between this policy area and others in which scientific experts have been observed to exercise a strong influence on EU policy choices. It would hardly be plausible to argue that, in the first half of the s, a tight, closed network of national agricultural ministry and Commission DG VI officials dominated CAP decision-making. The conflicts surrounding the foundation of the CAP were not resolved at the level of the civil service; they could be settled only by politically responsible ministers.

And, although an arguably important first step towards the formation of a 'closed' agricultural policy community had been taken with the creation in of the SCA to prepare the Agricultural Council meetings in place of the COREPER , the Agricultural Ministers were far from being a law unto themselves at the time that the landmark CAP decisions were reached.

The decisive negotiations took place in 'Jumbo' council meetings attended not only by agricultural, but also by other typically economics and foreign ministers. It is by no means clear that, in France, with its relatively tight process of inter-ministerial coordination, the Agricultural Minister Pisani always had the last word on agricultural issues when there were inter-ministerial conflicts: The looser inter-ministerial coordination process in Germany enabled Pisani's German counterpart to operate more autonomously of other ministers and the Chancellor Peyrefitte In the cereals price conflict, he was bypassed in critical phases - by Erhard negotiating directly with the DBV president and the Economics Minister accepting the cereal price agreement with Erhard's backing while he was absent from the negotiations.

Altogether, one has the strong impression that French and German behaviour in these three 'high-political' conflicts was strongly shaped by overriding foreign as well as agricultural policy priorities determined more by the foreign ministers, the German Chancellor and the French president than by the agricultural ministers themselves. The primacy of the national governments in the disputes over the foundation of the CAP observed here is compatible with an interpretation based on the institutionalist model.

However, whilst the subsequent evolution of the CAP is explicable in terms of this model, in as far as the policy, once launched, could be reformed only with the support of all member governments see Scharpf , the institutionalist approach can not easily account for the fact that the CAP was launched at all Given the unanimity voting requirement, the German government could have vetoed the start of the policy - why did it not do so? One hypothetical explanation is that, because of its strong initial opposition to the proposals in the first two conflicts and because it could not be outvoted and was therefore in the strongest bargaining position, it was able to mould the policy in its interests and thus had no reason ultimately not to accept it This interpretation is difficult to square with the facts that the common cereal price was set not at the German level, but halfway between the German and French levels and that, quite clearly, important German actors, notably the DBV and the Agricultural Ministry, would have preferred to have no common agricultural policy at all.

The CAP, in its original guise, corresponded much more closely to French than to German agricultural interests. It might be possible to reconcile an institutionalist interpretation with what happened by arguing that there was a cross-issue trade-off between France and Germany whereby France obtained the CAP in exchange for conceding industrial trade liberalisation to Germany and that issue-linkage thus circumvented a German veto of the CAP To the extent that the CAP decisions fell at the same time as that to make the transition to the second stage of the common industrial market and both France and Holland insisted that they would veto the latter unless the CAP was launched, there was indeed such a trade-off, although the available literature does not show whether fear of the collapse of the common industrial market was in fact the main motive for the German government's ultimate acquiescence in the CAP's launching.

The simultaneous agreement of common milk, meat and rice prices and a negotiating mandate for the Commission for the Kennedy Round at the end of may seem to have been a Franco-German trade-off. In any case, in as far as there was such a trade-off on this issue, it reflected the normal pattern in Franco-German relations - which was for Germany to make concessions to France in the present in the subsequently disappointed hope or expectation that France would make concessions to it on other issues later.

Thus, Germany received no simultaneous concession from France when it agreed to the common cereal price. Rather, it conceded the common price in exchange for the other member states - it meant, of course, France - agreeing to closer "economic and political cooperation" see above in the future. The main reason for this failure must be seen in the divisions in the German government over the relative priority of maintaining good relations with France and the Chancellor's propensity, in case of conflict, to arbitrate in favour of France on EU issues see below.

A second possible objection to the institutionalist model is that it makes no distinction per se between the member states in terms of their veto power and capacity to shape EU decisions Could Luxembourg, for example, really have resisted the launching of the CAP as Germany did - or persuaded or coerced Germany into acquiescing in it as France did?

In fact, like Germany, Luxembourg and Italy were opposed to the Commission's cereals price proposal, but they gave up their resistance to it much earlier than the Germans. At the same time, it is questionable although not certain whether any state other than France could have cajoled Germany into finally accepting the CAP and the common cereals price Of the other member states, France was the one that could most credibly threaten to withdraw if the CAP was not launched i. Although the three conflicts portrayed here were not exclusively Franco-German battles, the first two were conducted primarily between these two states, although important interests of the others were also at stake, while the crisis divided France from all the other member states, including Germany.

In contrast to the institutionalist model, intergovernmentalism, at least in Moravcsik's incarnation, does distinguish between the 'big', more powerful member states France, Germany, and, since , the UK and the 'small', less powerful remaining ones. Critical EU decisions, however, represent the lowest common denominator of the preferences of the big three in the first half of the s, the big two , unless two of the three can credibly threaten the third that they would, if necessary, pursue a given integration project without it and the third state fears that its exclusion would negatively affect its interests.

The CAP decisions in the early s amounted, however, to more than the 'lowest common denominator' of French and German preferences, between which there was hardly any common ground: This outcome can not be attributed to France's having brandished a credible threat of 'excluding' Germany from the CAP, since German participation was indispensable to the project - Germany was the biggest prospective foreign market for French agricultural produce and the biggest prospective contributor to the budget of the CAP, the purpose of which, for De Gaulle, was to socialise the cost of supporting French agriculture across the member states.

It was not by threatening Germany with 'exclusion' that the French government was able to secure such a favourable outcome of the CAP conflicts, but rather by threatening itself to 'exit' from the EU if the CAP was not launched. Thus, the outcomes of the CAP conflicts are entirely compatible with Moravcsik's intergovernmentalist model if this is amended to include the possibility of more radical than'lowest-common-denominator' solutions being achieved by the threat of 'exit' rather than 'exclusion'.

Why, in other words, was it ultimately more concerned than the French to avert a crisis, in the worst-case scenario the collapse of the EU? For De Gaulle, the EU was useful in as far as it could be used as a lever for maximising French influence on European and world affairs and a vehicle for making Europe more independent of the United States.

Douglas Webber

But it was not indispensable, least of all if it could not be put in the service of these goals and encroached on French sovereignty. For West German leaders, the EU was intrinsically extremely valuable. Through its integration in the EU, the Federal Republic, following World War II, could aspire to achieve its "international comeback" and greater national sovereignty Schwarz The closer economic and political integration of Western Europe facilitated by the EU helped to bolster West German security in the Cold War, which, in the early s, was at its height.

Moreover, the EU provided an appropriate multilateral framework for the consolidation of the Federal Republic's relations with France - partly because a close Franco-German relationship was and would be more acceptable to the smaller West European states when it was multilaterally embedded than otherwise For Adenauer, forging and maintaining a close relationship with France was, like promoting European integration, an extremely important foreign policy goal in itself.

In EU affairs, according to a French Commissioner of the era, he was resolved to "do nothing that could estrange him from Paris" Marjolin He was prepared to play junior partner to De Gaulle: France had therefore to take over this role and Germany could bring its power to bear and foreign policy ideas to fruition only indirectly via France Akten In the last year or so of his Chancellorship, Adenauer also moved closer to France for fear that the US might betray Federal German interests as he interpreted them in direct talks with the Soviet Union over Berlin and in the hope that De Gaulle would take a tougher stance against the Soviets Schwarz Erhard showed De Gaulle "the cold shoulder" Osterheld These disagreements did not prevent Erhard making a "decisive contribution" to settling the cereal price dispute - "largely at our urging", according to the French foreign minister Couve de Murville By this time, however, Franco-German relations had already deteriorated seriously; in , as De Gaulle set out to destroy the EU's supranational vocation, they grew even worse.

For Paris, Bonn "really did the minimum to avoid a rupture" at the June council meeting and nothing to facilitate a settlement of the conflict between France and the other member states in the ensuing crisis Couve de Murville For Bonn, the crisis was precipitated exclusively by France, whose boycott represented a "naked treaty infringement" Lahr If the resolution of the conflicts over agricultural policy had been left entirely in the hands of the French and German agricultural ministries, the CAP would presumably never have seen the light of day - the bureaucracy in the Bonn ministry was hostile to the EU Freisberg In Bonn, the strongest supporters of the European integration process and a close Franco-German relationship were to be found at the highest echelons of government: From the outset, the French and German foreign offices evidently tried to coordinate their positions on EU issues.

Without their "close" cooperation, according to the French foreign minister, the creation of the CAP and the abolition of tariff barriers between the member states would hardly have been possible Couve de Murville He advised Erhard not to agree to the common milk, rice and meat prices in Schwarz In , there was no longer any major political actor on either side of the Rhine with both the political will and political authority required to avert a crisis.

Indeed, on this occasion, exceptionally, the clash between the highest echelons of the two governments over institutional issues seems to have been more intense than that between the agricultural ministers over farming issues. After the crisis and the 'Luxembourg Compromise', unanimous voting was institutionalised in the Council of Agricultural Ministers. This practice actually benefited the German minister, who wanted the highest guaranteed prices and was primarily responsible for their being set well above world market levels Tracy The Commission, whose members had accepted the "bad compromises" of the s so as not to endanger the overall integration process, was reduced or confined to the role of an 'honest broker', searching for the lowest common denominator between the member states and unable to bring about major changes in the CAP von der Groeben The Commission's weakness and the importance of French and German attitudes in CAP politics were exemplified in the conflict over the Mansholt Plan, whose aim was to modernise European agriculture by creating a smaller number of larger, more productive farms.

Among the member states, France and Germany most strongly opposed the plan, which, after a struggle lasting several years, was finally adopted, but in an extremely diluted form that bore little resemblance to the original proposal, in Pinder The guiding hands of the French and German governments were likewise evident in the permanent arrangements for financing the CAP adopted in These were reportedly based on a broader agreement reached between the French President Pompidou and the German Chancellor Brandt that also embraced the issue of British entry into the EU Gerbet Germany became by far the biggest net contributor to the CAP budget.

Helmut Schmidt, German Chancellor from to , wanted to reform the CAP and tried, but, by his own admission, had "only minimal success" Schmidt His scope to push for and secure major changes in the policy was limited by his dependence on a coalition partner, the FDP, which provided the Agricultural Minister and did not want to antagonise German farmers, and by his fear that any attempt to do so would cause "serious irritations" in the Franco-German relationship, which, in his view, became and remained closer during his Chancellorship than it had been even in the times of De Gaulle and Adenauer Schmidt During the s and s, German farmers and their organisations made their peace with the CAP and developed into ardent defenders of the policy, which was viewed very critically, on the other hand, by business interests and the Economics Ministry, which had originally hoped that the Europeanisation of agricultural policy would erode Germany's tradition of agricultural protectionism.

In the Agricultural Council, France and Germany formed a "strong mutually protective alliance", whereby France supported the high internal prices demanded by Germany and Germany the export subsidies consequently required by France to be able to sell its agricultural produce on the world market Moyer b: For two reasons, one internal and the other external to the EU, reform of the CAP finally became a serious political issue in the second half of the s. First, the policy, with its tendency to produce growing produce surpluses, gradually grew so expensive that it threatened to 'break' the EU budget.

Second, important trading partners of the EU began to exert pressure on the EU to change a policy which was held responsible for disturbing world agricultural markets - and enabling EU exporters to gain a growing share of them. With a view to curbing EU subsidisation of its agricultural exports, the US and the agricultural-product-exporting states that later coalesced in the 'Cairns Group' insisted that agriculture be put on the agenda of proposed new GATT trade liberalisation negotiations.

In the absence of an agreed multilateral framework for agricultural trade, the EU had to reckon with the possibility of the CAP being attacked through the GATT disputes procedure and, for fear of provoking a spiral of trade wars, being forced gradually to dismantle it. It agreed finally to agricultural trade at least being discussed in the round, apparently because it "wanted to avoid a major break with Germany" of the kind that its veto of a new GATT round would have precipitated Odell The German delegation at the opening round of the conference honoured the French government's preparedness to compromise by supporting its demands concerning the round's agenda Odell The conflicts over the Uruguay Round and CAP reform took place in an EU that had twice as many member states as it had had at the time of the CAP's creation in the early s and in which, beginning in the mids, more extensive use was being made of qualified majority voting in the council, so that the capacity of single member states to block the Brussels decision-making process was reduced.

In the case of the Uruguay Round, the Commission was supposed to negotiate with other GATT member states on the basis of a negotiating mandate adopted by the Council of Ministers and to consult the ' Committee', a body consisting of high-level civil servants from the member states' trade and economics ministries, foreseen in the Rome Treaty and designed to oversee the Commission's conduct of trade negotiations with third countries. Any agreement reached by the Commission required the council's approval. Normally, the council could decide by a qualified majority, but the range of issues covered in the Uruguay Round was so great that it was uncertain whether a new treaty required qualified majority or unanimous support in the council.

Although the Commissioner for External Relations and the Commission DG I had overall responsibility for the conduct of the negotiations and reported to the General Affairs Council, talks on agricultural trade were conducted for the Commission by the DG VI, headed by the Agriculture Commissioner, who reported to the Agricultural Council. The successive enlargements had increased the diversity of agricultural interests in the EU. France and Germany no longer occupied the two most extreme positions on agricultural and agricultural trade issues. Rather than from Germany, the strongest support for a reform of the CAP and agricultural trade liberalisation came from Britain, which has a very small and relatively productive agricultural sector, followed by Holland and Denmark, both of which have very competitive, export-oriented agricultural sectors and could survive well with a more liberal and less expensive agricultural policy.

The strongest supporters of the status quo was France and Ireland. As in the s, the German government was divided on these issues and its position in Brussels poorly coordinated. On the one hand, the Economics Ministry was extremely critical of the CAP and wanted the EU to make extensive concessions on agricultural trade in order to secure a Uruguay Round agreement. If, at this level, its position coincided closely with that of the French government, on concrete issues there were important differences, which had their roots in the greater inefficiency and weaker world market orientation of German, compared with French, agriculture.

On the issue of how production ought to be curbed that lay at the heart of the CAP reform debate, the German minister opposed price cuts, which the French government supported, and instead supported administrative measures to take land out of production 'set-aside' , which his French counterpart opposed. On the issues of market-opening increasing imports of foreign agricultural produce into the EU and 're-balancing' imposing tariffs on hitherto duty-free imports of foreign agricultural produce in exchange for reducing tariffs on imports of produce on which duties were already imposed , there was little difference between the positions of the two agricultural ministries, which were against market-opening and for 're-balancing'.

However, compared with Bonn, Paris was more prepared to contemplate cuts in the subsidies paid to EU farmers, while Bonn was more amenable to cuts in subsidies for exports beyond the EU - from which French farmers benefited much more extensively than their German counterparts. On top of these differences, there was a profound divergence in attitudes of civil society in the two countries towards trade liberalisation and the importance of the protection of agriculture.

Found at these bookshops

In Germany, the DBV was the only relevant organised interest that opposed trade liberalisation. Via the Economics Ministry and the Chancellor, organised business interests tried to exert their influence to ensure that the Uruguay Round did not collapse on conflicts over agricultural trade. All the relevant political parties - from the moderate right to the Greens on the left - basically supported trade liberalisation. In France, the situation was reversed. The political Left and Right were divided over the Uruguay Round between strong liberalisation opponents and moderate supporters.

The farmers' associations, on the other hand, were united in their hostility to agricultural trade liberalisation. Public opinion on trade liberalisation, especially agricultural trade liberalisation, was predominantly hostile, pressing the government to stand firm and to risk, if necessary, the talks' collapse. Very little progress had been made in agricultural trade liberalisation talks by autumn , shortly before the Brussels GATT summit at which, originally, the round had been scheduled to finish. Up to this point, the Brussels Commission had negotiated on the basis of an 'overall approach', practically an informal mandate, worked out between the Commission and the Dutch council presidency in and so called to "pacify the French" interview.

In September the Commission finally proposed a formal mandate, which it asked the Agricultural Council to approve Numerous agricultural ministers found the Commission's proposals to be too radical. The council met on no fewer than seven occasions to discuss them. The strongest opposition to them came in the first two meetings from the German minister, Kiechle, who, under pressure from DBV, was particularly worried about the implications of 'tarification', the conversion of physical and other non-tariff barriers to agricultural imports to the EU into normal tariffs interview.

The intensity of Kiechle's opposition, or at least the 'cover' that he enjoyed from Chancellor Kohl, may be explained by the fact that federal elections, the first in the united Germany, were to take place in early December: Encouraged by the German stance, the French minister added his voice and opposition to Kiechle's.

The formation of this Franco-German alliance, which was supported by Ireland, explained why so many meetings were required for the council to approve a mandate, one which was finally "much watered-down", compared with the Commission's proposal, and provoked a "barrage of criticism" among the EU's negotiating partners Paemen and Bensch Kohl is alleged to have instructed the German delegation in the decisive meeting to support the French demands "to the hilt" Frankfurter Rundschau , 7 November Given the extreme divergence between the positions of the EU, which was prepared to offer agricultural subsidy cuts of no more than 15 per cent, and the US, which demands cuts of 75 to 90 per cent, the failure of the Brussels summit was practically a foregone conclusion In , as the CAP threatened to 'break' the EU budget, a so-called 'stabilisers package' was adopted, foreseeing reductions in support prices if production exceeded agreed limits.

According to Patterson, more radical measures were prevented by the French and German governments, in particular by their respective leaders' apprehension that they would be sanctioned by farmers in pending elections if they were to acquiesce in a thoroughgoing CAP reform Patterson The package failed to break the CAP's spending dynamic, so that, already by , the issue of what to do to curb spiralling CAP costs was back on the EU agenda.

The timing was no coincidence. Despite official denials and despite the internal, fiscal pressures for changes in the CAP, the "broad thrust" and, especially, the timing of the reform were dictated primarily by the pressures exerted on the EU in the Uruguay Round interview; Paemen and Bensch Subsequently, DG VI conceived and drafted the proposals "in consultation with the important member states" interview. Between MacSharry and Delors, there appears to have been consensus over the aim of the reform, which was intended to safeguard the European "agricultural model" by keeping small farmers on the land, while, especially by reducing European surpluses, making the CAP more compatible with the "imperatives" of international trade interviews; Ross MacSharry's ideas were discussed and approved by the Commission in In the Agricultural Council, the ideas were received correspondingly positively by countries with mainly small farms, including Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece, and with greatest hostility by Britain, Denmark, and Holland, which had larger or at least more productive farms Handelsblatt: The authors of the MacSharry Plan calculated that they could do without the support of Britain, Denmark and Holland, but hoped to gain that of France and Germany.

As Moyer points out b: The French and German agricultural ministers' initial reactions to the reform proposals were, however, negative, albeit for different reasons, the French minister rejecting the set-aside components and the German minister the price cuts, at least in the foreseen magnitude.

Nonetheless, no Franco-German front against the reform developed, although Kiechle reportedly tried to build one interview. Rather, the debate in the Agricultural Council, until shortly before the decisive council negotiations at least, was "dominated" by the conflict between the two states interview. The divergence between French and German objectives may have facilitated the eventual adoption of the reform by enabling the Commission to play the two states off against each other.

Certainly, the reform was also facilitated, however, by the growing internal and external pressures for change, one consequence of which was that the agricultural ministers' control over agricultural policy was diminishing in both Bonn and Paris. In autumn - a sign that Kiechle's position in the German government was growing weaker - Bonn signalled that it would agree to farm price cuts, at least provided farmers were compensated for such cuts by direct payments see below.

It is possible that, around the same time, the French government accepted the principle of a CAP reform, although, publicly, the Agricultural Minister continued to oppose it up until the last minute Le Theule and Litvan At the highest political levels in Bonn and Paris, the need for a reform of the CAP had been accepted much earlier. Chancellor Kohl and President Mitterrand discussed CAP reform and the Uruguay Round in the presence of their agricultural policy advisers in February , soon after the publication of the Commission's proposals. According to a French official, the two leaders reached an "informal understanding" on issues of both procedure and policy content.

On content, they agreed that, in line with the Commission's and also the French approach, the German government should accept a cereal price cut and that, in exchange, the French government would not ultimately block a Uruguay Round agreement interview. The subsequent course of events concerning the CAP reform can be reconciled with this informal 'deal' between Kohl and Mitterrand, provided it can be assumed that the French and German governments are not monolithic entities and the conclusion of such a deal is not therefore incompatible with the agricultural ministers' continued opposition to the reform.

The existence of a Kohl-Mitterrand 'deal' encompassing the CAP reform is corroborated by reports that ultimately Mitterrand obliged Mermaz and Kohl instructed Kiechle to accept the reform interviews; Die Welt , 24 May The CAP reform was adopted in May The Commission's basic reform programme survived the final council negotiations, but was diluted in significant details. Over MacSharry's opposition, the Portuguese council presidency proposed that the cereals price be cut by 27 per cent and that large farm er s too be compensated for the cut by direct payments.

A spokesman for the presidency explained: The reduction of the price cut proposed by MacSharry represented a concession primarily to Germany. Of all the member states, among which Britain, Holland and Denmark wanted an even deeper price cut than MacSharry and otherwise only Belgium and Luxembourg regarded it as too radical, Germany had opposed this proposal most vigorously Financial Times , 19 May ; Agra Europe, no. It had not wanted to consent to a price cut exceeding 15 per cent interview. It may have acquiesced in a substantially larger cut in exchange for French support for the German position on beef policy, as part of a Franco-German accord on the reform reached shortly before the final council negotiations Le Theule and Litvan Two other significant changes were made in the council to MacSharry's concept.

First, his proposals concerning set-aside requirements were significantly weakened - this was presumably a concession to France, which was the strongest critic of this component of the reform package. Second, direct financial compensation for price cuts was extended to large as well as small farm er s. This amendment was pushed most strongly by the British Agricultural Minister, but was supported as well by the French and German ministers, both of whom had groups of farmers which could benefit from such an amendment - Kiechle, for example, following German reunification, in former East Germany interviews; Financial Times , 22 May In the final council vote, only Italy voted against the amended package.

The approval of the CAP reform represented a major political victory for MacSharry and the Commission, which, in collaboration with the Portuguese council presidency, appears to have shrewdly exploited its room for manoeuvre between the member states and their conflicting preferences and to have averted the formation of a blocking minority of reform opponents.

The outcome does not constitute proof, however, of the Commission's "autonomy" vis-a-vis the member states or a "defeat" for France and Germany.

Rather, the fact that a reform which, in the past, would have been politically impossible had now been adopted reflected changes in the political constellation, both inside the EU fiscal crisis of the CAP and in its external relations Uruguay Round. These changes had been translated - within the respective national governments - into irresistible pressures on the agricultural ministers to contemplate and acquiesce in measures which, in the past, they would certainly have or indeed had blocked.

The reform was conceived with a view to winning Franco-German support and, despite a prolonged conflict between the French and German agricultural ministers over it, its adoption was facilitated by a late bilateral deal between Bonn and Paris. They promised to reduce the EU's agricultural production surplus and thus the cause of the trade conflicts between the EU and the other big agricultural-exporting states. Moreover, they were a sign that, within the EU, the political balance had begun to move in favour of making concessions in the Uruguay Round.

In particular, following the collapse of the GATT summit in Brussels, the position of the German government, which at that time had coalesced with the French to oppose major cuts in EU agricultural subsidies, had started to shift. Chancellor Kohl, who had aligned himself so closely with German farming interests at the time of the Brussels summit, reputedly argued now that a failure of the Uruguay Round would be a "catastrophe" Deutscher Bundestag The German Cabinet encouraged the Commission to try to bring about a successful conclusion of the round by the end of the year Deutscher Bundestag At a European-US summit in The Hague in November , the two sides made significant progress towards narrowing their differences over protection and domestic and export subsidies.

The US moderated its demands for cuts in subsidies, while, for the EU, the Dutch Prime Minister, as council president, offered bigger cuts than the EU had rejected the previous year. Any hopes that the CAP reform would facilitate a rapid relaunching or indeed conclusion of the GATT negotiations were dashed as the Uruguay Round became entangled with the burgeoning debate and crisis in the EU over the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty.

The French president Mitterrand reacted to the treaty's defeat in a referendum in Denmark in June by calling for a referendum on the treaty in France in September. Before then, the government in Paris was not going to do anything which might endanger the treaty's ratification. Amongst other things, especially following France's acceptance of the CAP reform, which prompted massive protests in the country, this meant avoiding any decisions that could further antagonise farming interests.

The first consequence of Mitterrand's decision was thus to rule out any major French concessions on the Uruguay Round at the Munich G7 summit in July. The summit allegedly came "close to resolving the deadlock, but President Mitterrand was able to persuade his fellow heads of government that a breakthrough in Munich could jeopardise a French 'yes' vote" in the September referendum Agra Europe, no.

Once the referendum was out of the way, however, the pressure on the Commission to try to bring about a GATT agreement intensified It came first and foremost from the German government, which was increasingly worried about the economic conjuncture and itself was under pressure from industrial lobbies not to let the Uruguay Round fail interview.

Once the German bandwagon started rolling, the Commission "jumped aboard" interview. The divergence between his approach and that of the External Relations Commissioner Andriessen was no longer as great as it had been in The failure of fresh talks over agriculture in Chicago the weekend before the US presidential elections brought the conflict not only between the EU and the US, but also within the EU, to a head. The issue that almost precipitated a trans-Atlantic trade concerned oilseeds soya beans.

The collapse of the Chicago talks over this issue prompted the American administration to threaten to impose penal tariffs per cent on a range of EU agricultural exports to the US within 30 days if the conflict was not meanwhile resolved.

The American trade sanction threat, together with the failure of the Chicago talks, led to a bitter conflict within the Commission and to an important Franco-German split in the EU council. Angered at Commission President Delors' interference in his conduct of the Chicago negotiations, MacSharry, who, unlike Delors, would like to have clinched a deal at Chicago, resigned - temporarily, as it transpired - as the Commission's chief agricultural trade negotiator.

At the same time, despite obtaining the support of several other, especially southern European, member states, France did not obtain a qualified majority in the council of foreign and trade ministers in favour of its demand for counter-retaliation against the threatened American trade sanctions. According to one source, "France had pulled out every stop to get Germany to back delay on GATT, arguing that the government would fall and rioting by French farmers would ensue if the agricultural subsidy cuts in the Uruguay Round were agreed" Financial Times , 12 November On this occasion, however, the German delegation aligned itself with Britain, Denmark, Holland, Luxembourg and Italy in pleading for a conciliatory approach towards the US.

As suspicions intensified in Bonn and London that the French government might be bent on collapsing the Uruguay Round altogether, Kohl had apparently authorised his Liberal Foreign and Economics Ministers to oppose the French position. The break in the Franco-German alliance on the Uruguay Round and the relative isolation of France in the council and Delors in the Commission bolstered MacSharry and Andriessen in their intention to try to reach an agreement with the US on the oilseeds and Uruguay Round agricultural trade conflicts We had to put the French under pressure" interview.

This time a deal was clinched Andriessen thought that the Blair House accord was compatible with the most recent mandate laid down for the negotiations by the European Council and that, although it would be a "difficult" task, he would be able to persuade the council to approve it interview. Given the external pressure being put on the EU and the internal pressure being exercised by business interests in favour of a new GATT treaty, DG VI was "fairly certain" that the member states, including France, would accept it interview. For those member states which, like MacSharry, were most concerned to protect the EU's capacity to keep on paying domestic subsidies, to protect the "social element" of the CAP, the Blair House accord was, by and large, acceptable.

The French government, on the other hand, rejected the accord, which it claimed would require additional EU agricultural land to be 'set aside' and was therefore incompatible with the CAP reform. At the first post-Blair House council meeting, uniting foreign and agricultural ministers, several other member states - Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Ireland and Belgium - also expressed worries that the accord might conflict with the CAP reform None, however, seems to have backed a French demand that the GATT agricultural trade talks be frozen until agreement had been reached on all other sectors - a demand which Andriessen argued would, if accepted, destroy the Uruguay Round altogether Agra Europe, no.

Soisson had threatened the use of the veto in a meeting with Andriessen prior to the Blair House negotiations interview After the deal had been made, the French government made the threat official, securing Parliamentary approval for a resolution stating that the government would "veto any draft agreement contrary to France's fundamental interest". However, while the government said that it would impose a veto only once a legal text on the agreement had been submitted to the council, the right-wing opposition, under pressure, given the impending elections, to outbid the government, pleaded for a tougher stance, insisting that the government veto the accord at once, although it was not clear how this could have been done.

Martin Häusling, MdEP

In Brussels, the French veto threats were discounted. Like Andriessen, most observers seemed to regard them as a "bluff" interview. They did not imagine that Mitterrand, who would remain the final arbiter of French foreign policy, even under a new, right-wing government, would authorise a French veto, which would plunge the EU into a major crisis and jeopardise the progress in the integration process of which, over the preceding decade, he had been a major co-architect At Brussels and among the other EU member states, the French Socialist government's strategy was seen to be to 'contain' the Uruguay Round conflict and to avoid having to decide whether to try to veto an EU decision before the March elections.

The Commission chose not to bring the issue to a head by submitting the Blair House accord to a vote in the council, fearing that there would be either a blocking minority against it or a constitutional crisis with unpredictable consequences if France were outvoted and had recourse to the 'Luxembourg Compromise' to veto it interview.

Informiert bleiben

In any case, there was no need to bring about a decision on the accord until an agreement had been reached on an overall new GATT treaty, of which the accord, if approved by other GATT member states, would form a part. By and large, in fact, after MacSharry's and Andriessen's activism in late , the Commission adopted a low profile in the ongoing conflict over the accord so as not to exacerbate it and destroy the chances of reaching a compromise within the EU interview.

For his part, apart from warning of the dangers of France retreating behind some kind of economic 'Maginot Line', the Commission president Delors also kept relatively quiet on the issue during , calculating that anything he said in support of the accord might incite the new government in Paris to oppose it interview. The French elections brought to power a centre-right government with a massive Parliamentary majority composed of parties which had vociferously opposed the Blair House accord and which counted the farmers among their core electoral clienteles President Mitterrand appointed a moderate and liberal Gaullist, Edouard Balladur, as Prime Minister partly to ensure the continuation of a 'pro-European' foreign policy.

• Michelin et la gestion de carrière: Des itinéraires Trois-Etoiles (Pratiques dentreprises) (French Edition)
• Disegno per Bambini: Come Disegnare Fumetti - Armi (Imparare a Disegnare Vol. 15) (Italian Edition)
• The Meadow and the Millpond: Tales for Children
• LOuest barbare (Spécial suspense) (French Edition)
• Hookup Spanish Dictionary for Love and Romantic Relations
• Outcasts of River Falls
• Tras la pared (Salir del armoario) (Spanish Edition)