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Book reviews – Comptes rendus – Buchbesprechungen 135
refunds. Their analysis of this question (pp.390–408) is too summary and chapter 8 merely
deals with “measures closely related to the market and price policies”, while the objective of
the reform for the 3d millennium is, on the basis of the principles of globalization,
transversality and rural socio-structural policy, to replace the CAP by a rural policy of which
the agricultural policy would only be one element.
This book must be considered above all as a dossier, that allows to see whether the
evolution of the first pillar of the CAP in terms of results and inadequacy of economic
objectives is consistent with the sociopolitical realities. The factual, economic approach
minimizes a permanent intergovernmental debate on the choices to make. Especially, the
part of the protagonists: decision-makers, i.e. government circles, and pressure groups, i.e.
professional circles, are passed over in silence. The lack of boldness in the writers’
comments is regrettable insofar they have lived through the reported events and could have
shown a more critical attitude, which would have increased the value of their work on a
historical level. The problem is perhaps the title chosen for this work considering its content.
If A. Ledent and P. Burny tried to give their work a historical dimension, one can’t help
but notice its deficiencies, as it ignores existing studies carried out on the CAP, its origins
and its developments. 3 Obviously, they haven’t read the studies of historians on the project
of the “Green Pool”. As to its developments, they ignore a great number of reference works.
Under these conditions, they remain prisoners of technical and economic interpretations and
make many mistakes over dates or over content and chronology, in particular when speaking
about the Green Pool (chapter 1). This first chapter, in which moreover the protagonists are
not correctly identified: J. M. Charpentier instead of René Charpentier, J. C. Eccles instead
of David Eccles, and which doesn’t keep to the chronological order of the Green Pool, must
not hold our attention.
Chapter 2 presents in a classical manner the finalities and the sections of the CAP at the
beginning of the sixties: marketing and pricing policies, foreign trade policy, structure
policy and social policy, without emphasizing the fact that these sections had to be
developed concomitantly, and without showing the “political” evolution: choices and
priorities that between 1958 and December 1968 (Mansholt memorandum: “Agriculture
1980”) have restricted the field of the CAP. Like all good economists, the authors insist on
the other hand on the evolution of the principles of Community preference and financial
solidarity and on the evolution of the objectives of the CAP. And, in chapter 3, starting from
the principle that the CAP and the Common Agricultural Market have to be merged, i.e. that
the CAP has to be reduced, despite the stipulations of article 38 of the Treaty of Rome and
the Stresa resolution, to an organization of agricultural markets for the main agricultural
produce, they emphasize the commercial approach of common prices.
On this point, their presentation is pertinent, the way they present the terms of internal
organization and the protection and support mechanisms, emphasizing the regulation
mechanisms set up gradually according to the evolution of the economic situation. But they
remain very reserved on the finalities of the CAP that was implemented first out of concern
over the level of income, income parity and preservation of family holdings. They merely
mention (p.21): “there is a transition from traditional farming to industrial farming”.
Chapter 4 is revealing Ledent’s and Burny’s difficulty where to place themselves in the
field of history. They prevaricate between “the redirecting or the reform of the CAP” (p.74),
putting on the same level the adaptations of the CAP, the adjustments of the COMs and the
reforms. According to them, the reform of 1992 does not represent a historical break. This
3. The absence of reference to the study of the Belgians F. DEHOUSSE and Ph. VINCENT, L’éternelle
réforme de la politique agricole commune et les limites d’Agenda 2000, published in Studia
Diplomatica (Belgium), No5(1998), is surprising. The same is true for the work of G. OLMI, Politique
agricole commune, Commentaire Mégret, Brussels, 1991.