Economic patriotism in European agriculture

In several sectors, national growth strategies have led governments to transfer economic patriotism to the European level to ensure continued control over these sectors. This contribution explores how European agriculture and the CAP constitute a policy regime which seeks to discriminate in favour of particular social groups, firms or sectors understood by policy-makers as ‘insiders’ because of their territorial status.

The case of agriculture, where policy is made at the EU level, illustrates how supranational economic patriotism co-exists and complements national ambitions and explains why European integration is not necessarily synonymous with the liberalization of the sector in multilateral arenas. The contribution explores how CAP reform, the re-emergence of food security discourse and a complex interplay of productionist and consumptionist discourses present opportunities for discriminatory economic patriotic interventionism in favour of European agricultural producers.