A Common Agricultural Policy for European Public Goods: Declaration by a Group of Leading Agricultural Economists

Leading agricultural economists from all over Europe have agreed on a declaration on the future of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This message comes at an important moment: The European Commission will soon publish its conclusions on the budget review, launching the negotiations of the post-2013 CAP and the next long-term EU budget. Now is the time to define the future objectives and priorities of the EU.

Reform of the CAP, which still receives more than 40% of the EU budget, will be crucial for a new, growth-oriented European agenda after the economic crisis. It will also be a decisive factor in the fight against climate change. Agriculture is responsible for roughly 10% of the EU’s greenhouse emissions but the current CAP does little to make agriculture more climate-friendly.

In their Declaration, the agricultural economists argue for a fundamental reform of the CAP. They propose the abolition of market intervention and blanket income support to farmers. Instead, subsidies should be targeted at the provision of public goods of European interest, such as the preservation of biodiversity. The declaration and the list of signatories can be downloaded here.

Part I: Discussion of the Declaration by :

• Paolo De Castro, Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development of the European Parliament
• Prof. Ewa Rabinowicz, Research Director of the Swedish Institute for Food and Agricultural Economics and a signatory of the Declaration

Part II: Speeches arguing for or against selected key propositions of the Declaration:

• Anastassios Haniotis, DG Agriculture and Rural Development, Director for
  ‘Agricultural policy analysis and perspectives’
• Pekka Pesonen, Secretary General of the European farmer union Copa – Cogeca 
• Valentin Zahrnt, Research Associate, European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) 
• Prof. Ernst-Detlef Schulze, contributer to the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for the IPCC and lead researcher of the ‘Assessment of the European Terrestrial Carbon Balance’

Roger Waite from AgraFacts will be the moderator.

The event is organized by the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) with the support of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF).

RSVP to info@ecipe.org before November 17