The reform options facing the EU were various: leaving price support intact, supplementing it with extra policy instruments; reducing price support levels with larger cuts accompanied by alternative income-support instruments;
through to replacing price support totally. In this section we look at CAP reforms in the context of the EU budget reforms of 1984 and 1988, which, as noted in the previous chapter, altered the environment in which CAP-related decisions were taken. This was the first occasion where actors concerned with the budgetary consequences of the CAP entered into the CAP policy system.
However, their influence was limited to specific reform episodes and was not permanently institutionalized.
Principles of Support
The basic principle of the CAP, the constitutional commitment to support agriculture set out in Article 39 of the Treaty of Rome, has remained
unchanged since 1958. Moreover, most reforms prior to 1992 left the underlying principles of price support intact. The one notable change to price support (agreed in 1988) was an automatic price cut if production exceeded a
‘Maximum Guaranteed Quantity’. Some of the ‘reforms’ shown in Table 7.1 merely limited the extent of price rises (notably Guarantee Thresholds), whilst even when support prices were cut (for example, through the cereals Co-Responsibility Levy (CRL) and Stabilizers) the reduction was modest.
Given that the margin of EU prices over world prices was often in excess of 50 per cent, the fundamental basis of policy and the resulting production incentives remained unchallenged.
Table 7.1 CAP reforms before 1992 – a summary of key features
Date Reform Description Pressure Binding?1
1977 Dairy Co- Producer levy (max. 3% of Budget No Responsibility target price)
Levy (CRL)
1982 Guarantee Negotiated cut (max. 5%) in Budget No thresholds support prices if production
(multi- exceeds specified amount – commodity) after ‘normal’ price rise is
agreed
1984 Dairy 100% super-levy if Budget Yes
production production exceeds specified
quotas amount
1986 Cereals CRL Producer levy (3% of Budget No intervention price)
1988 Stabilizers Automatic cut (max. 3%) in Budget No support prices if production
exceeds specified amount (plus additional CRL)
Notes:
1A constraint is defined as binding if the need for reform is immediate.
Of the reforms shown in Table 7.1, dairy quotas stand out as the only one to limit spending by building some kind of constraint (production) into CAP policy instruments. In 1988 the original stabilizer proposal had been for a spending-based trigger, but this direct control on spending proved unacceptable politically. Thus, other than for the dairy regime, CAP support has remained open-ended. As set out in Table 7.1, dairy quotas were the only
reform enacted under binding pressure, created by the BBR. Spending had exceeded the revenue ceiling in 1983 but over ECU800 million of CAP spending – and the ensuing crisis – were merely delayed by transferring them to the 1984 budget.
Path dependency can be used to structure a narrative of these changes in terms of the price support system limiting the options for reform. Moreover, the changes that have been introduced have reinforced the development of the CAP along its existing, particular path. Notably, the underlying operating principle of quotas – production in excess of a certain quantity triggering a financial penalty – was the same as Guarantee Thresholds, the difference being the size of the penalty. This also implied continuity in administration, with some tasks also devolved to the member states, or even to individual dairies.
Moreover, quotas were chosen over two alternatives, a rise in the CRL and a cut in the intervention price, on the basis that these would have undermined the principle of price support.
Support prices remained high with quotas. Indeed, domestic politics, especially in Germany, meant that retaining high prices was a prerequisite for securing the 1984 reform agreement. By containing spending quotas also targeted the one binding constraint, thus winning support from those countries concerned by rising CAP spending. Quotas thus reconciled member states whose positions were otherwise mutually exclusive. Although spending growth was contained by quotas, spending levels were only reduced subsequently as quota levels were reduced. In the meantime the spending limit was again breached in 1985, the deficit covered by additional payments from the member states. From 1986, a previously agreed rise in the spending limit helped restore budgetary balance.
A feature common to both the 1984 and 1988 reforms was the non- exclusivity of the policy network driving change. Until then, the perception was that the Commission and CoAM worked in a closed system with farmers and agri-business interests to shape policy. Further, as noted in Chapter 6, the financial system of the EU worked in a manner that accommodated the financial consequences of CoAM decisions. As the BBR was threatened then breached, the influence of the Budget Commissioner and national Finance Ministers became prominent in the CAP policy system. Moyer and Josling (1990, p. 70) described an ‘inner circle’ of Commissioners, appointed in 1985, who drove the 1988 reforms – Commission President Jacques Delors, Agriculture Commissioner Frans Andriessen and Budget Commissioner Henning Christophersen (and their cabinets).
Given this composition and the role the budget played in forcing CAP reform, it was no coincidence that 1984 and 1988 also saw changes to the budget and budget process. In 1984 it was agreed to limit annual CAP spending growth to 2 per cent. This formal institution could have represented
a significant change in the direction of the CAP, but without a formal mechanism to enforce this, spending rose by an average of 18 per cent a year between 1984 and 1987. In terms of the narrative, the position of the Budget Commissioner and national finance ministers in the CAP policy process was epiphenomenal. In 1988 a wide-ranging budget reform was agreed, which included the introduction of multi-annual Financial Perspectives. This made spending limits more transparent, but again there was no new institution to help contain CAP spending. A more detailed narrative than the one provided here would explore why the position of budget actors was not institutionalized, but for our purposes the path dependency concept in which the institutionalized price support system drives policy dynamics can make sense of the evidence.