Where does civil society stand on CAP reform? A coalition game
Dacian Ciolos, Commissioner for Agriculture, has launched a public debate on the future of the CAP beyond 2013. The results will be presented on a conference in July 2010, but the main interests and positions can already be anticipated. Promoters of a lean CAP are in the minority, and risk losing out to a coalition of rural interests, altermondialists and environmentalists.
The Table shows the five main groups of stakeholders with some examples of organizations that belong or gravitate towards each group. The ‘green’ in ‘green environmentalists’ indicates that these organizations care primarily about the direct effects of the CAP on environmental outcomes and are, in contrast to other environmentalists, less interested in harnessing the CAP for all kinds of better-world-objectives.
| Group | Stakeholders | CAP budget | Policy priorities |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mainstream farmers | Copa-Cogeca, CEJA, European Milk Board | big | max. farm income |
| Rural interests | landowners, rural networks, RISE foundation | big | strong support for agriculture, moderate spending on public goods (to improve rural economy/quality of life and to legitimize the big budget) |
| Altermondialists | Attac, European Coordination Via Campesina, non-mainstream farmers, environmentalists, animal rights activists | (fairly big) | local production-consumption cycles, quality-food culture, GMO-free, social justice |
| Green environmentalists | joint proposal by BirdLife International, EEB, EFNCP, IFOAM and WWF | fairly big | high spending on public goods |
| Green & lean reformers | reformthecap, free traders, potentially business community, tax payers, research and innovation promoters etc. | small | exclusively efficient spending on European public goods |
The threat is that rural interests will exploit the discourse of both green environmentalists (calling for more CAP subsidies with environmental benefits) and altermondialists (in their praise of local community and economic ties as well as in their warning against leaving agriculture to the markets). They can thus present their position as the only viable solution (with some concessions to green environmentalists and altermondialists), cast themselves as public-spirited compromisers (given that they move away from the extreme demands of mainstream farmers), and attack budget savers as outsiders who fail to understand, but want to destroy, a rural world of great social, cultural and environmental value.
It is therefore crucial for budget savers to build an alliance with those who prioritize better CAP spending and are willing to accept a reduced CAP budget in exchange – that is, with green environmentalists. A nice side effect of such an alliance is that it will force rural interests wanting to enlist the support of green environmentalists to make more concessions in terms of better spending targeted at public goods, given that the environmentalists have a strategic alternative with the green & lean CAP camp.
Stakeholders who want to slim down the CAP can expect a further advantage from working closely with environmentalists: they can develop a green message. Calls for spending cuts can be countered more easily if they are not accompanied by some positive vision for agriculture and land use. CAP budget savers may colorfully depict all the benefits of increased spending in other issue areas – a European identity formed by student mobility or the EU leading the global struggle against climate change. But the audience will balance these promises against the presumed losses in the countryside. A win-win message that shows that we can achieve more for land-use-related public goods while saving money for other purposes is more convincing.
The trouble is that most stakeholders who prefer a green & lean CAP have not started investing time, money and political capital in CAP reform. Their position papers are older and less elaborate than those of any other group of stakeholders, and they have not yet seriously begun to build a lean-CAP-alliance that could subsequently be greened.