THE COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY IN FRANCE AND THE UNITED KINGDOM

Explain the contrasting adaptation to the Common Agricultural Policy in France and the United Kingdom



The Common Agricultural Policy in France and the United Kingdom

Introduction

The Common Agricultural Policy is known as the CAP. It is the oldest policy sector in the European Union, enumerated under Title II, Article 38, in the “Treaty Establishing the European Community” of 1957, known as the Treaty of Rome. It mandates the “establishment of a common agricultural policy among the Member States” under a “common organization of agricultural markets” (Article 40, No. 1-3). The EU budget, famously, has consistently been ear-marked at more than 50% for the CAP and has only recently dropped just below that figure. It is a long-time contentious though in some ways noble policy sector, aiming as it does to not only protect the farmer and his livelihood but markets and the countryside as an invaluable cultural-capitalist ecosystem, as well. This has occurred through product-based price intervention, quotas, and subsidies linked to production.

Two major reform periods, the first in the early 1990s and the second in the early 2000s, attempted to move away from the price-support and production-based regime toward more liberalizing measures that would de-link aid from decisions about production. This study focuses on the second reform, known as the Fischler reform of 2002-2003, named after the EU's then Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Franz Fischler, the Austrian firebrand who initiated it. The reform process had all kinds of drama built into it, due not least to its call for a sharp break with the past.

As the integration process of Europe has been accelerated, the influence of the European Union (EU) is becoming intensified on its member nations as well as on the current globalized world. Along with the advancement of Europeanization, European countries have strengthened multi-level governance. It promotes “the potential of the policy networks approach” (Bache, 2008, p.36); it leads to the establishment and enactment of supranational policies such as European Employment Strategy or Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Especially, as for CAP, it consists of a large proportion of the whole EU budget and expenditure; although the proportion is decreasing as other policies at EU level has been gradually emphasised (European Commission, Agriculture and Rural development, 2011). Therefore, it is considered that CAP can have enormous impacts on the member states.

Thus, questions arise as how supranational policies within EU exercise their influence on those members and how EU takes part in those policies' adaptations. For the purpose of clarifying these questions and to examine whether or not result from Europeanization has changed the practise of policy-making and its implementation among Europe, this essay mainly focuses on CAP in France, which is a leading agricultural country and is“ a major net beneficiary of the CAP” (Lowe, Buller and Ward, 2002, p. 6),” andthe United Kingdom(UK), “a net contributor [of the CAP]”(Lowe, Buller and Ward, 2002, p. 6). It is organised as follows; the first section briefly reviews the ...