Controversy and the CAP
Civitas, 5 May 2010
What do a Swedish accordion club, the daughter of a former Bulgarian minister, a Danish billiard team and a Dutch airport all have in common? It’s unlikely to be farming… and yet they all appear to have benefited from subsidies from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, writes Natalie Hamill, according to the latest figures, released over the last few days.
In 2008, it became compulsory for member states to publish ‘who receives what and how much’ from the CAP, although some states have found crafty ways of making that data tricky to locate and analyse. The NGO Farmsubsidy.org has been instrumental in “digging out” this information and improving the transparency of the CAP subsidies.
Even countries that are usually open about their payments are known to occasionally bend the rules. Britain’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) refused to publish the UK’s 2009 data before the General Election (despite the deadline being Friday 30th April), over fears that it may cause some politicians “embarrassment” before the election.
With confusing payouts and dodgy transparency it is even more disconcerting that the CAP receives the largest allocation of the EU budget – in 2008 the subsidies amounted to more than €50 billion. The EU insists that “the common agricultural policy ensures farming and preservation of the environment go hand-in-hand”, and that it helps to “develop the economic and social fabric of rural communities”.
The UK remains largely unconvinced, and is unlikely to be so any time soon, with its contributions to the CAP far outweighing the benefits it receives in return. For example, in 2008, the UK contributed €4,965 million but received only €3,755 million in CAP subsidies.
Some countries, however, are fiercely protective of the policy; unsurprisingly the supporting countries are usually those in which spending is higher, for example pro-CAP Spain contributed less than the UK in 2008, at €4,883 million, yet received nearly double the spending of the UK at €6,916 million, according to farmsubsidy.org.
Bizarre payments to accordion clubs and Dutch airports aren’t the only ones to raise concern, it seems larger landowners (the British Royal Family have made the list), and multi-national corporations (in 2008 the number one spot in the UK was cinched by global sugar company ‘Lyle and Tate Europe’ with €134,069,000), are as likely to receive subsidies as struggling farmers.
Supporters of the CAP commonly justifies the policy by claiming that it promotes and protects the European farming industry. But it simply doesn’t do “what it says on the tin”. With the CAP coming up for review in 2013, one can only hope that the work of groups such as farmsubsidy.org will have sufficiently “unearthed” its flaws, and serious reform will be undertaken.