Enlargement of Non-Common Part of the Common Agricultural Policy

Abstract

As Greer (2005, p. 216) noted, what Europe has in the field of agriculture is, rather than common agricultural policy, common framework for the negotiation of fundamental tensions on agriculture between the member states, and differentiation and diversity between them are built-in aspects of the CAP. This paper is structured for the purpose of sharing the view of Greer (2005) and pointing out that discretion of each member state is expanding, especially regarding cross compliance and the EAFRD, both of which were not discussed in Greer (2005).
This paper is organized as follows. Section 1 focuses on the CAP reforms after 1992. After their details are described, Daugbjerg and Swinbank (2009) is referred to because it provides a closer look into the CAP reform process. While it applies two ideas (agricultural exceptionalism / agricultural normalism) to plot the process, this paper analyses the CAP reforms from the point of view of renationalization, which means the expansion of discretion of a member state on the decision-making of the CAP. Section 2 presents how the CAP was established, showing that a story that its birth has made agricultural policy differences across Europe disappear is a fantasy in the early years of the European integration. Then the focus is on the fact that, after mid-1980s when agri-environmental problems emerged, the EU has increasingly accepted those policy measures under common rules (for example, regulation or directive) which vary among member states. Section 3 analyses two policy measures whose importance is rising in this decade, cross compliance and the EAFRD. Cross compliance forms a link between the direct payment and compliance with certain rules regarding land use, animal welfare, and so on. Since some rules on cross compliance are laid down by a member state (or its region), the fact that cross compliance gets emphasized means expansion of discretion of a member state. As well as cross compliance, the EAFRD, established in 2005, also brings about the effect of the expansion of discretion, because it respects innovative governance through locally based and bottom up approaches to rural development. In addition, it inherits the principle of additionality from the structural policy and, therefore, can jeopardize one of the CAP principles, financial solidarity.