France: One year earlier to the day, the French President Jacques Chirac swore he'd let no one touch the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) until 2006. So why, I asked the French Minister for Agriculture Mr Hervé Gaymard, in the midst of Bastille Day celebrations, did France accept an in depth overhaul of agricultural subsidies at the end of June, writes Lara Marlowe in Paris
The answer was the EU's budgetary agreement in Brussels on October 15th, 2002, Mr Gaymard said. On that day, Paris was assured that the same amounts of money would be allotted to agricultural policy until 2013; it would merely be attributed differently.
"The context changed, so 15 days ago, we were able to write the rules of the CAP until 2013," Mr Gaymard explained. "We were supposed to conduct a technical review in 2002 and a reform in 2006. We changed the calendar. We did the real reform now, so as not to do it in 2006."
President Chirac, Mr Gaymard insisted, "was totally consistent when he said 'nothing before 2006' last year; because we had an appointment for the CAP budget and re-organisation in 2006. Last October's budgetary agreement made it possible to move the date forward."
It was doubtless the first time the EU completed a reform three years early. "We're in a different world now," Mr Gaymard said. "The budget and agricultural policy have been reformed for the next 10 years."
French farmers' groups are pleased with the agreement now, the Agriculture Minister said. But "in the days that followed it, for lack of information, some of their leaders - not all of them - made alarmist speeches, saying, 'It's the end of the CAP!'"
Last week, Mr Gaymard visited three French departments to discuss the accord. "I was very well received. But you must explain and explain. When you have union leaders predicting the end of the CAP, obviously it makes farmers anxious. But when they go into the fine print, they realise it's a good agreement."
France, he said, always accepted the principle of partial "decoupling" of subsidies, so that CAP assistance would not depend completely on production levels. The new arrangement is "horribly complicated", he admitted, but in the cereal and animal sectors, of great concern to Paris, "decoupling" is only partial, with 75 per cent of cereal production "decoupled" and two in a menu of seven subsidy options preserved in the animal sector.
Mr Gaymard said he has "the best personal and professional relations with (his Irish counterpart) Joe Walsh," whom he called "the institutional memory of the Agriculture Council, because he has been a Minister for so many years." Mr Walsh, he continued, "is regarded as the wise man of the council".
When Mr Gaymard was assigned the French agriculture portfolio last year, "he was one of those who guided me in my first European footsteps, which are not easy".
Both Mr Walsh and Mr Dermot Ahern, at the Department of Fisheries, are "reliable guys you can work with, frankly, in total understanding", he concluded.