Reforming the CAP Budget – A Perfect Test for the EU

“EU money for jobs, not cows”. Who can forget Tony Blair’s 2005 speech when he asserted before the European Parliament that a “modern budget is not a budget which, in 10 years, will still dedicate 40% (of EU spending) to the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP)”? At that time, the British Prime Minister was formulating a concept that has since become widely accepted – namely, that any sort of budget that devotes most of its spending to agriculture, food and rural development should be viewed as obsolete. Tony Blair’s criticism would have been justified if the EU budget was that of a federation, but rather it is one of a heterogeneous political integration process. As the only common economic policy to be endowed with an EU budget, the agricultural and rural policy is also the only one almost entirely funded by Brussels. This particular Community status has earned the reputation of being an ever-recurrent topic of contention in budgetary negotiations since 1979. Viewed as being costly, as compared to cumulated European public spending (member states and EU spending) broken down by sector, agricultural policy ranks only 11th, with 1.1% of total public spending (Bertoncini, 2009).