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SPEECH/04/392
Dr. Franz FISCHLER
Member of the European Commission responsible for Agriculture,
Rural Development and Fisheries
"Who does what in the CAP"
Informal Agriculture Council
Noordwijk, 7 September 2004

The questions raised by the Dutch Presidency come at a particularly appropriate
moment.
With the implementation of the 2003 reform and the incorporation of the remaining
unreformed sectors into the new CAP, EU agriculture is well prepared to meet the
future challenges. It is also clear that the reform will have major implications for what
and how we will produce our food and fibre in Europe. It is therefore a welcomed
initiative from the Presidency that we today should analyse and discuss what all that
means in practice.
But first, it is necessary to see the 2003 CAP reform in its full institutional and
international context.
A Long-term Policy Perspective
The new CAP creates a great opportunity for the EU agricultural sector to improve
its market orientation and competitiveness. The success of the new orientation of
the CAP, which moved away from price and production support to a more
comprehensive policy of farm income support through the single farm payment
scheme, has heralded a brighter future for the sector. But any improvement will not
take place overnight. Regarding food quality issues, many of the infrastructures in
our agro-food industry that the Dutch Presidency paper describes still require further
investment and development. That is why it has been so important to provide the
sector with a stable, long-term policy perspective until 2013.
Forthcoming Reforms
There are also some important sectors, which have not yet entered entirely into the
CAP reform process, namely sugar, fruit and vegetables and wine. Given the strong
associations of these products with quality and their prominent role in the European
agro-food industry, it will be necessary to bear in mind the broader social and
financial implications of reform, as well as their specificities during the future reform
discussions. However, also in these sectors, the long-term policy and financial
perspectives provided by the 2003 CAP reform will assist in orienting the policy
down a sustainable path, founded on better market orientation and greater
competitiveness.
Rural Development
At the same time, we must address how rural development policy should be adapted
in the light of the changes brought by the 2003 Reform and the challenges ahead in
the rural regions of Europe. We must respect the growing demands of EU citizens in
terms of food and environmental quality; we must take into account the specific
interests and difficulties of people living on the countryside; we should think about
new ways to better integrate the farmsector and the rural communities into our
modern society. It is therefore vital that the EU adopts and implements a rural
development policy in tune with the times. The food quality and animal welfare
measures added in the 2003 Reform package must be made to work and
modulation will obviously play an important role in the attainment of rural
development objectives.
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The International Scene
While it is clear that the CAP reform has huge implications for our own farming
sector, the to-ings and fro-ings in the ongoing Doha round at the WTO have made
evident the reality of the world food economy and our place in it. Even before we
discuss the implications of the increasingly globalised trade policy, the strength that
the CAP reform has given to our negotiating position in the WTO and the gains
which we have made (and will make) should not be underestimated or overlooked
when we discuss the future of our agro-food industry. With the reform adopted, the
EU was able to take a proactive role in Geneva, recognised by all parties in the
WTO, which was essential for bringing the General Council of the WTO to a
decision on the establishment of Modalities in Agriculture on August 1 st this year.
Subjects for Discussion
Consumer confidence
Turning to the points raised by the Presidency, we come to a first question, which all
of us have had to face in recent years – consumer confidence in the products our
agriculture provides.
Here it is essential to distinguish what the public expects in terms of food safety and
what the public wants in terms of food quality.
Food safety should very clearly remain first and foremost the responsibility of the
government authorities and we have now a well-established approach in place. The
EU is responsible for setting out the overall policy framework and ensuring its
uniform application. The Member States are responsible for implementing it given
their particular situation.
Food quality, on the other hand, is a much more diverse and many-sided concept. In
this domain, the public authorities have limited themselves to drawing up framework
legislation of voluntary rather than obligatory application on operators. In this sense,
quality standards are much more adapted to what the Presidency document refers
to as “private” initiatives. Europe, with all its great diversity in food culture, has
already come a long way down this road – not only through the private sector but
also through various private-public bodies and interprofessional organisations –
which have helped to extend our control of quality standards along the supply chain.
The reputation of our food would suggest that this approach has had a fair degree of
success. Therefore, a pragmatic approach, based on the best of what has been
done in the past but building in new technologies and savoir-faire should be the one
to guide us. It is an approach which European citizens would recognise and would
be more likely to accept.
Such an approach also requires appropriate information for consumers. In this
context the Commission has taken up the call, raised under the Irish Presidency, for
an information strategy concerning CAP reform implementation. In order to
implement such a strategy, my services are already working with officials
responsible for information policy at the national level in order to identify common
priorities and possibilities for cooperation. Based on the ideas emerging from this,
the Commission will examine how to achieve real partnership and better
complementarities of our efforts.
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Effects on third world trade
The Presidency has raised another important question in asking whether developing
countries might not be disadvantaged by rising quality standards and the increasing
demands made by purchasers.
While it is true that in the Doha Development Round we have had more success
than ever before in binding the developing countries into a mutually beneficial, freer
trade environment, we cannot avoid the fact that, as world agriculture becomes
more competitive, quality standards and product differentiation are more and more a
reflection of consumer demand. That is part and parcel of the market-orientated
approach and the Presidency is right to raise the question of what its implications
are for development policy in general. If we accept that there is a sense in which
the customer is always right, and so the demands of purchasers must be met, then
we must also accept that assistance to developing countries will need to address
this issue.
Subsidiarity
We are all well aware that our administrations are fully involved at present with the
setting in place of the 2003 CAP and associated sector reforms. The Commission’s
aim is based on the respect of the principles of the Council decision through
common rules, which respect the specificity of each Member State’s agriculture.
Nor should we forget that a crucial point of the 2003 CAP reform has been the
simplification it will bring. So the Commission is on its guard to ensure that
unnecessary complication is avoided in order to attain the more important political
goal of a better and more clearly defined set of standards for EU agriculture.
Thus the basic plan for the issues of subsidiarity in decision-making, and the goals
of limiting the administrative burden and simplifying the regulatory environment,
have been laid out. In terms of on-the-ground implementation, Member State
authorities will retain the basic duties assigned to them.
Concluding Remarks
The fact that issues concerning food quality should now have come to the fore
should not surprise us. Much of the public debate surrounding the 2003 CAP reform
concerned the impact on farming and the countryside. However, given the
developments in our society, and in particular its food and food purchasing habits,
the impacts of CAP reform on the food industry are equally important. The
Presidency paper raises interesting questions as to how agricultural policy and its
management should react to the demands of the food industry and consumers. We
shall all need to devote our attention to finding the best possible answers.
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