The
home lobby
Laurent
Develay, Adviser on food quality and food security issues with
the Greens group at the European Parliament
Courrier de la Planète: What agricultural
lobbies are present at the European level? What is their influence
on European decisions?
Laurent Develay:
The framework of the action of lobbies must be specified before
answering this question. A bill that arrives on the desk of the
President of the European Parliament has been drafted by the European
Commission. It refers to lines of general policy defined by the
Council. Much time elapses between these lines and the version
that reaches the European Parliament, during which there are many
contacts between the European Commission and lobbyists. The latter
have already done much work before the bills are examined by the
parliamentarians. This is the way in which the Commission works.
One might be against this and put forward questions of transparency
and democracy. But this is the way it works, whether in industry,
telecommunications, the automobile industry or agrifood. The Commission
performs what it calls ‘consultations’ to see which direction
it can go in.
 t
should not be forgotten that the agrifood industry is the third
largest employer in the European Union and that exports are worth
an annual 50 thousand million of Euros . In addition to the presence
of purely agricultural lobbyists, represented in Brussels by the
Confédération paysanne européenne and COPA-COGECA (Committee of
Agricultural Organisations in the European Union – General Committee
For Agricultural Cooperation In The European Union), we are more
accustomed to being confronted with agrifood lobbyists at the
European level.
These are very organised people with
offices in Brussels, who follow dossiers step by step, contact
members of parliament and their staff and intervene at the Commission
level. The most recent food security crises in the agrifood sector
have resulted in several changes. The ‘mad cow’ crisis in 1996-97
was followed by true reorganisation of the European Commission.
The Directorate-General for Health and Consumer Protection was
set up, leaving the door ajar for consumer associations.
Let us take the last two major European
debates on the sanitary safety of foodstuffs - the writing of
the White Paper presented in January 2000 and the proposal of
horizontal European legislation renewing the approach to food
safety and simultaneously setting up a European Food Authority.
On each occasion, the European Commission has carried out preparatory
work with consumer representatives –mainly Euro Coop (European
Community of Consumer Cooperatives) and BEUC (European Consumers’
Organisation)– with the organising of several round tables in
different European countries. Nevertheless, an economic and financial
imbalance remains between the industry representatives, who have
budgets for weighing on the Commission’s proposals and the adjustments
that can be made by the Parliament, the consumers’ organisations
and other NGOs that of course do not have the same resources.
CDP: Is this imbalance between lobbyists
the same at the Commission and the Parliament?
L. D.: Lobbyists
who do their work well do not approach a European People’s Party
(EPP) member of parliament in the same way as he approaches a
Green Party MP. A Green MP belongs to a minority group and must
therefore work a lot to find a majority. In contrast, he has considerable
proposing power and may have nuisance power through introducing
amendments that do damage where the agrifood industry was not
expecting it. In fact, we are working on this subject in close
relations with the NGOs.
But lobbying can take other forms. Let
us take the FNSEA for example, the most powerful farmers’ union
in France. Its electoral power is so great and the joint management
of the French agricultural policy (FNSEA/Ministry of Agriculture)
is so firmly rooted that certain French European MPs from farming
backgrounds are in a way representatives of this union.
In practice, lobbyists operate in two
ways: either they make an appointment with an MP or a member of
his staff for a discussion, without making proposals but to see
what state of mind he is in, or they use a more abrupt method
–of course they don’t operate in the same way with everybody–
by sending amendments directly. Faxes or e-mails are received
from lobbyists requesting the introduction of a particular amendment.
However, the agrifood crises have changed
the discourse both in the institutionalised agricultural world
and among agrifood lobbyists. There is discussion of food safety
in the agrifood sector and of ‘rational’ or ‘sustainable’ agriculture
among agricultural lobbyists. They have adapted to the trend of
the moment. They realised that if they didn’t make communication
efforts on the subjects that preoccupy citizen-consumers they
would be going against the trend. And that’s not good when you
are a merchant! It can truly be said that the food crises led
to awareness both among consumers and among the suppliers of agrifood
products. Unfortunately, it seems that only the packaging has
changed because the product is just the same.
CDP: What can be said in terms of
impact?
L. D.:
Let’s look at what has just happened in Doha. At the last moment,
Europe accepted a compromise on export subsidies for agricultural
products. Lamy and Fischler’s mandate was to refuse a phrase that
says that export subsidies should be phased out. Europe has still
not given up subsidising its exports. It is certain that the lobbyists
- those representing the FNSEA and chambers of agriculture - were
in Doha and that they did everything they could for Lamy and Fischler
to stand firm, for them not to sign a document promising that
Europe could no longer subsidise its exports in ten years time.
The lobbyist is there to maintain a
certain general state of mind and to ensure the continued progress
of the single way of thinking, that of the productivity-based
agricultural model that makes it possible to export everything
that can be exported… The lobbyist ensures that no new ideas on
other ways of producing emerge. To prevent it being said, for
example, that it is perhaps not necessary to spend millions of
euros on purchasing soybean in Brazil and the United States to
feed the cattle that we do not succeed in selling in Europe and
that is sold on the world market at a ridiculous price, thanks
to export aids.
One might think that each lobby plays
its own game. But the whole is constructed in such a way that
it is always very difficult politically to emerge from this single
thinking that means that the European agricultural model will
continue to reduce the number of farmers, cause sanitary crises
and be costly for the European budget.
CDP: Is there thus no change in the
balance of power since the Berlin summit in 1999?
L. D.: Berlin
introduced the concept of rural development and eco-conditions
for the payments of certain subsidies. You have to know that only
two or three countries, including France, use this mechanism today.
It might perhaps be better if countries were obliged to apply
the Berlin Agreement totally.
But beware, another model for European
agriculture was not invented in Berlin. The Treaty of Rome, forming
the base of the common agricultural policy that requires ever-increasing
production to feed Europe, was not called into question. This
idea remains, even though Europe has become self-sufficient and
produces tonnes of wastes and stocks that we will never succeed
in getting rid of. Today, only 10% of European products leave
for the world market. Now, this 10% costs us a fortune, given
the support that its benefits from. Do we really need this? It
would be better to invest the money in high quality production,
in maintaining a true network of small farmers, regional agriculture
or - why not? - get Europe out of the ‘plant protein’ impasse
that encourages it to purchase genetically modified soybean… The
Greens and Solagral have been repeating this for years!
Today, two categories of person would
truly benefit from a change: farmers and consumers. It is essential
that we should manage to link the two groups. As long as farmers
do not fully understand that what they produce arrives directly
in our plates and as long as consumers do not fully understand
that their purchases have a fantastic influence on the way of
producing, on the location of production and on its social and
economic consequences, we shall not assemble sufficient political
and economic forces for things to change. It is essential that
these two terminal links can meet and it is up to the political,
trade unions and economic powers to ensure that this can happen!
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