Germany also took action, replacing its SPD farm minister, Karl-Heinz Funke, with Green Party member Renate Künast, a Fischler ally and vocal advocate of CAP reform. Künast advocated strict standards for animal welfare, tough environmental regulation, and greater oversight of and limitations on industrial farming. Prior to the MTR, commitments to meaningful environmental measures were tepid at best. Environmental policies were optional, and implementation was left to the discretion of member states, who mostly ignored them due to farmer resistance. The series of food scares increased pressure on the CAP from consumers, environmentalists, and animal welfare advocates. Public opinion of the CAP in these matters was quite negative. While 90% of respondents in a 2001 Eurobarometer poll expressed a belief that the CAP should “ensure that agricultural products were healthy and safe”, only 36% thought that “food bought could be safely eaten” and just 34% felt that “food bought is of good quality” . As a result, Fischler saw an opening to push for meaningful, mandatory reforms that would increase food safety and security, including the adoption of environmental and animal welfare regulations. There was also a growing recognition among the public that farmers were significant polluters . According to Eurobarometer surveys in 2001 and 2002, just under 90% of respondents stated that the CAP should be used to “promote respect for the environment” while only 41% of respondents across the EU 15 felt that the current version of the CAP actually “promoted respect for the environment” . The environmental goal was second only to the objective of “ensuring the agricultural products are healthy” . The CAP bore the brunt of the blame for agricultural pollution,hydroponic container system given that it allowed for the industrialization of agriculture and by extension tacitly promoted the use of environmentally damaging farming practices, designed to extract the highest possible yields. A final problem confronting the CAP concerned the distribution of benefits. The CAP directed most of its support to only a small number of farmers. For example, in France, 40% of all aid went to fewer than 10% of French farmers, overwhelmingly the large cereal cultivators .
This problem, known variously as the 80/20 problem or the “Queen of England Problem” had plagued the CAP for a number of years. Reformers were under pressure to, if not correct this imbalance in support distribution entirely, at least attenuate it. The unequal allocation of CAP benefits, and reports in the press about disparities in payments received by large and small farmers, led Fischler and his associates to be concerned that public opinion would turn against the CAP. Declining public support was a real worry because EU officials, particularly other Commissioners, already questioned why such a large sum of money was being spent on an increasingly small faction of the population. The challenges and opportunities posed by enlargement, WTO negotiations, and poorly operating CAP programs offered Fischler and his associates an opportunity to propose far reaching reforms of the CAP under the auspices of the MTR. Such reforms were seen by Fischler and his team as necessary to “reduce the ammunition of those demanding large budget cuts and [to] create a new support base for the CAP” . If the CAP remained unreformed, unsustainable spending and environmental destruction would make it an easy target for other commissioners and member states who preferred a much slimmer CAP budget. Their case would be helped by increasingly negative attitudes from the general public. As Pirzio-Biroli, Fischler’s deputy, noted, “[we] concluded that, if we wanted to preserve the CAP, we needed to change it” . Fischler’s agenda was not just about cutting spending . Rather, he sought to reform the CAP to save the CAP- most notably by making it financially sustainable, viable under enlargement, compatible with WTO rules, and responsive to public concerns about food safety and the environment. Some critics saw Fischler as a bean counter, looking to make cuts wherever he could to get CAP spending under control. While it is true that Fischler was attempting to radically restructure CAP spending, these critics misread the motives behind his actions. Fischler was himself a former agricultural minister. He was seeking to reform the CAP and to make cuts not to please his colleagues in Brussels, but rather to make sure the CAP continued to be viable.
Fischler benefited from a high degree of personal credibility within the Commission, having been a minister of agriculture and the leader of Austria’s accession negotiations. He was considered to be both an expert on agricultural policy and a reform-minded official, who was willing to pursue the tough changes necessary for preserving the overall health of the CAP, no matter the criticism he might face from farmers or their member state representatives. As evidence of the high regard in which Fischler was held, Commission President Romano Prodi completely devolved agenda-setting competency to Fischler and reportedly “had no firm ideas one way or the other about agriculture and issued no directive to Fischler about how or whether to reform” . Although the MTR was intended only to be a health check and not a revision of existing CAP policies, Fischler believed that the CAP needed much more than a status report on the functioning of existing programs. A program that could neither work within the EU budget nor meet basic environmental and health standards ran the risk of being cut drastically by European technocrats, if not entirely eliminated. In addition, without reform, the CAP would stand to be an anchor inhibiting the EU’s ability to negotiate in the Doha Round of WTO negotiations. Fischler thus constructed his reform objectives around making those changes necessary to ensure the CAP’s long-term survival. If he did not reform the income payment system, new member states would explode the budget beyond sustainability. If the CAP remained an obstacle for European services and manufacturing in trade negotiations, these external actors would force deep and unpleasant changes to CAP programs such that European agriculture no longer tied their hands. In other words, failure to reform the CAP could spell the end of the CAP. Fischler’s central goals were to decouple CAP payments from production and to expand the environmental scope and standards of CAP policy . The first goal, decoupling, would help reduce the vast disparity in CAP income payments, whereby 80% of CAP income payments went to only 20% of eligible farmers. It would also put CAP spending into conformity with WTO rules. The second goal, improving environmental standards, would address growing public dissatisfaction with the effects of CAP policy on food safety and the environment. Decoupling would go a long way towards ensuring that the CAP remained financially viable in an enlarged Europe,planter pots drainage while mandatory environmental standards and regulations would make certain that newly-added agricultural land was protected as well as guarantee that food produced in Eastern Europe would meet the higher quality and safety standards already in place in the West. While there had recently been high-profile incidents of food-borne illnesses, overall safety and quality standards and rules in the West were much higher than those in the East. Without these changes, the CAP would be overwhelmed by the financial strain of supporting the new member states, would be challenged by Europe’s trading partners, and would lose public support due to its social and environmental consequences. Fischler had learned several lessons from the Agenda 2000 negotiations. During Agenda 2000, the early publication of reform proposals allowed vested interest groups the opportunity to mobilize and undermine initiatives before they could even be launched .
Farmers in particular, once tipped off about the contents, had moved to lobby their governments to oppose reforms before any discussion or formal presentation and explanation of the proposals could occur. Fischler, therefore, resolved to develop the MTR behind closed doors, like MacSharry had done with his 1992 reform. By working first in secret, Fischler would be able to propose a reform that called for dramatic and far-reaching change—more than was expected under the MTR. A more open development process would leave the agricultural directorate susceptible to interference from the member states. Given that a number of member states wanted the MTR to be nothing more than a review, Fischler opted to keep his proposals under wraps until the time was right. Secrecy also gave Fischler and the Commission a research advantage: they could collect and gather evidence so that when the reform proposal was presented, Fischler would be able to provide data to support his proposals . The member states would then be forced to play from behind in order to mount specific, evidence based criticisms of the Commission’s reform package. Because the content of proposals would be a surprise to the member states, they would be unable to make specific, detailed claims about the effects of reform, and any general reactions, like claiming the reforms would hurt farmer incomes, could quickly be refuted by the Commission, armed with data and evidence. Another key and more personal lesson that Fischler had learned was to be wary of French President Jacques Chirac. When speaking about his adversaries in CAP negotiations, Fischler stated, “my biggest opponent was Mr. Chirac” . The two had tangled multiple times in the past. Fischler described Chirac as an “intelligent and crafty politician who knew a great deal about agriculture and could manipulate political rules to his advantage” . Fischler recounted that at the Berlin Summit, where Agenda 2000 would be formally adopted by the European Council , Chirac “used a trick” to reopen and revise the agreement . First, Chirac exploited his personal relationship with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder who held the rotating presidency at the time. Because the CAP was part of the new Multi-annual Financial Framework , the summit chair could open any component of the MFF for debate and reform. Second, Chirac used a complicated rule in the operation and calculation of the CAP budget to compel other member states to abandon a dairy reform that Chirac did not like29. Fischler “was furious because the reform was already agreed to, but Chirac went back and undid the work” . Fischler learned the hard lesson that even when the agreement was concluded in the Council of Ministers, he still needed to make sure the holder of the rotating presidency did not reopen the CAP portion of the MFF at the European Council summit meeting. Fischler’s rocky relationship with Chirac continued after the Berlin Summit. Following the Agenda 2000 reform, Chirac unsuccessfully appealed to Commission President Prodi to not renew Fischler’s post as agriculture commissioner for a second term. When asked specifically about the MTR, Fischler again identified Chirac as one of his biggest adversaries . During the MTR negotiations, Fischler, however, benefitted from the lessons he had learned from the Agenda 2000 reform process and was better positioned to manage and respond to Chirac.Fischler’s initial plan was sent to the Commission on 10 July 2002 after months of study and work conducted largely in secret by Fischler and a small group of associates, including his Deputy Director, Corrado Pirzio-Biroli. The small group included only the top officials at DGVI. These officials relied on studies and analyses by experts within the DGVI administration, who conducted preparatory analysis and calculated potential effects of the reforms but were not fully informed of overarching agenda. Otherwise, Fischler and his associates preferred to keep the civil servants in the dark. Because CAP reform would force DGVI civil servants to change how they worked and adopt new, often complex and cumbersome systems, Fischler thought it unwise to reveal the extent of the plan to them. Fischler was also concerned that the civil servants might leak aspects of the program to their permanent representations, allowing the member states to begin to mount a defense before he could announce his reform package . Retrenchment-minded welfare state reformers are also known to work in secret. Keeping potential reform proposals out of the public debate and masking the costs of new policies and reforms are strategies commonly used by welfare state reformers to avoid resistance from those who stand to lose.