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Book reviews – Comptes rendus – Buchbesprechungen 135refunds. Their analysis of this question (pp.390–408) is too summary and chapter 8 merelydeals with “measures closely related to the market and price policies”, while the objective ofthe 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 whichthe agricultural policy would only be one element.This book must be considered above all as a dossier, that allows to see whether theevolution of the first pillar of the CAP in terms of results and inadequacy of economicobjectives is consistent with the sociopolitical realities. The factual, economic approachminimizes a permanent intergovernmental debate on the choices to make. Especially, thepart 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 haveshown a more critical attitude, which would have increased the value of their work on ahistorical 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 helpbut notice its deficiencies, as it ignores existing studies carried out on the CAP, its originsand its developments. 3 Obviously, they haven’t read the studies of historians on the projectof 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 andmake many mistakes over dates or over content and chronology, in particular when speakingabout the Green Pool (chapter 1). This first chapter, in which moreover the protagonists arenot correctly identified: J. M. Charpentier instead of René Charpentier, J. C. Eccles insteadof David Eccles, and which doesn’t keep to the chronological order of the Green Pool, mustnot hold our attention.Chapter 2 presents in a classical manner the finalities and the sections of the CAP at thebeginning of the sixties: marketing and pricing policies, foreign trade policy, structurepolicy and social policy, without emphasizing the fact that these sections had to bedeveloped concomitantly, and without showing the “political” evolution: choices andpriorities that between 1958 and December 1968 (Mansholt memorandum: “Agriculture1980”) have restricted the field of the CAP. Like all good economists, the authors insist onthe other hand on the evolution of the principles of Community preference and financialsolidarity and on the evolution of the objectives of the CAP. And, in chapter 3, starting fromthe principle that the CAP and the Common Agricultural Market have to be merged, i.e. thatthe CAP has to be reduced, despite the stipulations of article 38 of the Treaty of Rome andthe Stresa resolution, to an organization of agricultural markets for the main agriculturalproduce, they emphasize the commercial approach of common prices.On this point, their presentation is pertinent, the way they present the terms of internalorganization and the protection and support mechanisms, emphasizing the regulationmechanisms set up gradually according to the evolution of the economic situation. But theyremain very reserved on the finalities of the CAP that was implemented first out of concernover the level of income, income parity and preservation of family holdings. They merelymention (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 thefield 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 thereforms. According to them, the reform of 1992 does not represent a historical break. This3. The absence of reference to the study of the Belgians F. DEHOUSSE and Ph. VINCENT, L’éternelleréforme de la politique agricole commune et les limites d’Agenda 2000, published in StudiaDiplomatica (Belgium), No5(1998), is surprising. The same is true for the work of G. OLMI, Politiqueagricole commune, Commentaire Mégret, Brussels, 1991.