Why 60 hours of talking achieved almost nothing

Date: 04/07/1996

AGRICULTURE ministers did it again last week. A breed apart at the best of times, on this occasion they managed to spend 60 hours in each others' company with virtually nothing to show for it at the end.

While most laid the blame for this abject failure at the door of the Italian presidency, the tradition of the six-monthly 'marathon' reflects a more general malaise in the way decisions are - or, in some cases, are not - taken in the farming sector.

One official who travelled to Luxembourg for the June Agriculture Council puts things in the starkest terms. “It was a total shambles from start to finish. The presidency provided no proof whatsoever that it had prepared for the meeting before turning up on Monday morning,” he said.

Although ministers began their meeting in the middle of Monday afternoon, and finally gave up the unequal struggle in the early hours of Thursday morning, they actually sat together in plenary session for no more than eight hours.

Diplomats deny the official line that the rest of the time was spent in bilateral discussions, fine-tuning the various compromise papers. Most apparently had to content themselves with a good book or the limited sightseeing opportunities offered by the city of Luxembourg.

Rome could blame its failure to forge an agreement on the limited time its new Farm Minister Michele Pinto had to prepare for the June meeting.

Others suggest incompetence, naïvety and a certain arrogance which led Pinto to believe that a deal could be polished off with a minimum of thought.

At one point, the presidency spent three hours in bilateral talks with the French but still drew up a compromise paper which did little to meet their demands.

As much as anything else, Pinto's efforts failed because member states resisted his attempts to force through a number of changes aimed solely at favouring Italian producers. “There was no attempt at subtlety,” claimed one official.

The prospect that the Union may expand by as many as 12 member states has led some to take a long look at the traditional way of doing business in the Agriculture Council.

Much of the time wasted at these occasions is taken up by the infamous 'table rounds', where, instead of engaging in lively debate to hammer out a compromise, ministers are wont to trot out their well-known positions on a particular subject.

The idea of 27 ministers each spending 10 minutes giving their views on reforms to the fruit and vegetable sector - without the prospect of any result - has led to suggestions that work should be taken further at a lower level.

But that would not be easy. “Nobody has proposed change and it would be rejected anyway if one of the minority of countries in favour were to make that suggestion. If the British said they wanted to improve efficiency, people would suspect them of having other motives,” said an official.

Also part of the age-old tradition of the Agriculture Council is the way in which a group of unrelated dossiers are saved up for the final meeting of each presidency. They are then agreed in a package, where the special interests of one country are traded off against those of others.

Would it not, ask some people, be less expensive and more rational to cut the number of Councils, if nine of the 11 annual sessions yield few results? Should individual questions not be voted through on their own if a qualified majority can be mustered?

But the six-monthly package seems likely to remain the preferred approach.

Ministers obviously feel it is easier to sell the deal to their domestic audiences if they have 'fought through the night' to secure it.

“Basically, it is in people's interests to agree things in packages. Then everybody gets a little sweetener to take home with them at the end of the meeting,” says a long-standing observer of the Agriculture Council.

Formally, much of the work towards a compromise is carried out in bilaterals. Informally, much is done in the corridors or on the sidelines of the meeting. A diplomat from one of the northern member states argues this naturally favours the “southern way of negotiating”, rather than open discussions of real policy issues.

But even those uncomfortable with the system have learned to play the game, although it seems that it has taken the new member states longer to come to terms with this form of EU deal-making.

Austria felt extremely aggrieved at the deal it was granted on both sugar and durum wheat when it joined the Union. Since then, it has had to stand back and watch as other member states have negotiated themselves major concessions in these areas under the cover of bi-annual packages.

Some officials complain that policy is generated by an unholy alliance between France and Germany, neither of which is prepared to do anything to damage the interests of the other.

Others go further, suggesting that Guy Legras, the boss of the Directorate-General for agriculture (DGVI), works above all to ensure the competitive position of French agriculture.

Much of the problem appears to result from the fact that decisions on the Common Agricultural Policy remain wholly within the remit of the farm sector.

Preparatory work for Council of Ministers' meetings in all other sectors is finished off by Coreper, the Committee of permanent representatives to the EU, which keeps a weather eye on the interests of all government departments, not least the treasury.

But agricultural decisions fall under the auspices of specialist working groups and the Special Committee for Agriculture (SCA), established during the early years of the CAP in the 1960s.

“In practical terms, the CAP is decided exclusively by farmers,” says one official, pointing out that policy questions never stray outside the remit of officials and politicians from farm ministries.

Critics of the system accept that in the early days of the CAP, there were convincing arguments for the establishment of a specialist committee. But as Community competence has extended, the CAP is no longer the most complex policy area.

“This is why spending on the CAP spiralled over the last three decades, something that would not have happened if Coreper had been involved,” says a critic, stressing that it is not in the interests of the majority of countries who are agricultural protectionists to see things changed.

Another problem is the inability of the SCA to make serious political progress on dossiers of major importance. Because of the assumption that decisions worth tens of millions of ecu have to be taken at the highest political level, officials preparing the dossiers hold back from taking the political initiative.

“The set of compromises we had on day two of the June Council could have been prepared long ago by the SCA. There were 160 reserves on the paper on fruit and vegetables which went to the Council,” claims an official who was not surprised that it took so long to whittle down the differences. Even then, it proved impossible to reach agreement.

Although things are changing slowly, the influence of the farm lobby on Union decision-making remains out of proportion to the actual importance of agriculture to the economy.

But farm unions reject as 'simplistic' the argument that it is wrong that an industry accounting for such a small proportion of the EU's GDP should account for almost half of the budget.

“That is a non-argument. The CAP is the common policy in the Union. When you compare spending by every single member state in other areas, the CAP budget pales into insignificance,” comments an official from Austria's chambers of agriculture.

With the latest débâcle behind them, agriculture officials are now looking with a certain degree of optimism to the Irish presidency. Most believe the Council is run most effectively by the small member states who, lacking the infrastructure themselves, rely heavily on the Council secretariat to keep the cogs moving.

While larger member states may attempt to influence the direction of EU business, hopes are high that the Irish

will concentrate on “steering the ship efficiently”, according to one official.

A pro-European nation, the Irish will have the advantage of being an 'honest broker' in most areas of policy. Reliant as they are on the beef industry, they will also be determined to find a workable solution to the current crisis.

But whether they will be able to overcome the inherent problems of nearly 40 years of tradition is questionable at best.