Agri-environmental Policy in the European Union

Henry Buller, Geoff Wilson, Andrea Holl

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138701007
• eBook ISBN: 9781351790888
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

This title was first published in 2000: This volume provides a detailed examination of agri-environmental policy within ten European states. Individual chapters consider the agricultural and environmental policy contexts within each state and examine the range and significance of agri-environmental policy proposed in addition to their spatial and territorial impact, their policy-making implications and their consequences for the structures, institutions and actors of national farming policy both across and within national borders. Drawing from ten national profiles and the data sets provided, the book provides a comparative analysis of implementation trends, filling a gap in the literature on this topic. Taking European legislation as its starting point, the comparative section of the book examines how Member States have responded to EU imperatives in their budgetary commitments, in their implementation strategies and in the policy outputs that result. The study identifies similarities across European nations in the territorial and agricultural focus of agri-environmental policy and draws attention to the alternative.

1	Introduction: the emergence of Regulation 2078 Henry Buller, Geoff A. Wilson and Andreas Höll

Aims of the book

This book is about the adoption, implementation and achievements of the European Union (EU) agri-environmental Regulation 2078/92 (hereafter Regulation 2078), introduced as part of the 1992 reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Regulation 2078 is, at the time of writing, some seven years old. Most of the countries featuring in this book, have arrived or are arriving at the end of the first of the five-year agri-environmental programmes¹ that the Regulation imposes. All of the countries featured in this book are facing the prospect, over the next few years, of substantial changes in the way in which European agriculture is funded and regulated. What is clear from the European Commission’s Agenda 2000 propositions and indeed from national responses to these propositions, is that the political and financial priority given to the role of farming in maintaining and protecting the rural environment is likely to increase rather than decrease in coming years. Regulation 2078, and its preceding legislation, Regulations 797/85 and 1760/87, are therefore, we would argue, highly significant to the current evolution of European agricultural and rural policy despite the fact that until now they have not constituted a major component to the total CAP budget.

In 1996, Whitby examined the emergence of European agri-environmental policy (AEP) in eight Member States (Whitby, 1996a). At the time, in many of the countries studied, the implementation of Regulation 2078 was planned rather than operational. At the end of his book, Whitby suggested that further examination of the design and implementation of the policy were required before any assessment of its effectiveness could be made. The current volume is a contribution to that examination.

This book reviews the implementation of Regulation 2078 in nine EU Member States and the implementation of parallel agri-environmental mechanisms in Switzerland. The book derives from a research programme entitled ‘Implementation and effectiveness of agri-environmental schemes established under Regulation 2078/92’ which ran from 1996 to 1999 financed under the FAIR programme of the DG VI of the European Commission (DGVI, 1999). All the authors are drawn from members of that research programme. The chapters reflect the views of the individual authors which are not necessarily those of the European Commission.

The origins of Regulation 2078

The full title of Regulation 2078 is as follows: ‘Council Regulation 2078/92 on the Introduction and Maintenance of Agricultural Production Methods Compatible with the Requirements of the Protection of the Environment and the Management of the Countryside’. Introduced on the 30^th June 1992, the Regulation seeks to:

• accompany the changes to be introduced under the market organisation rules

• contribute to the achievement of the Community’s policy objectives regarding agriculture and the environment

• contribute to providing an appropriate income for farmers (EC, 1992a, Article 1).

As we have argued elsewhere (Buller, 1999a), behind these three goals lie three very different policy concerns each with its own, largely independent, political trajectory. To understand the Regulation and its impact, we need to place it in terms of these different contexts.

CAP reform

Regulation 2078 is one of three ‘Accompanying Measures’ to the 1992 reform of the CAP. As such, it forms an integral part of a wide-ranging reform whose principal driving concern at the time was to reduce the overproduction of certain farm products within the EU and thereby reduce the overall costs of the CAP (EC, 1985a). Reductions in costs meant changes in the ways in which farm aid is shared out, and the European Commission – in response to growing criticism of the regional and structural imbalances built into the manner in which agricultural support was distributed amongst European farmers at the time – were also mindful of the need to increase, relatively, the support of the less economically strong sectors and regions of European agriculture (EC, 1991b). A further concern underlying the 1992 reforms was world trade and the growing demands (particularly from the United States) that EU subsidies for agricultural production and export costs be reduced (Potter, 1998). All in all, these various concerns amounted to a relatively fundamental challenge to the original principles of the original CAP.

The 1992 agri-environmental Regulation 2078 fits into this reform agenda in a number of ways. First, it was an element in the general reform goal of reducing or stabilising certain agricultural production levels. As such, it sought to promote extensive farming practices and the reduction of entrants, leading to agricultural de-intensification. Second, agri-environmental aid, offered under Regulation 2078 (like its predecessor Regulation 797/85), was conceived as a ‘direct payment’ to farmers, compensating them for income foregone and the costs of compliance. This too fitted in with the newly designed system of direct compensatory and other payments for farmers as a replacement for former volume-related market support mechanisms. Finally, in focusing specifically upon environmental objectives, Regulation 2078 provided a possible mechanism compatible with the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) for supporting European farming and, specifically, those areas and farming types that would be most threatened by further alignment with world prices and by a more market-led agricultural policy.

Environmental policy integration

An additional concern to which Regulation 2078 offered a partial response was the need to address the issue of environmental damage caused by modern agricultural techniques (EC, 1997b). Here, a number of different elements can also be identified.

First, increasing public and political recognition of the role of the CAP in encouraging environmentally damaging agricultural intensification, together with the manifest failure of the CAP to support and sustain those more ‘traditional’ modes of agricultural production considered to be more environmentally friendly, were clearly emerging as dominant concerns during the 1980s; concerns that the European Commission itself acknowledged (EC, 1991b, 1992b). The expanding financial cost of European agricultural policy was becoming more and more difficult to justify in the face of such environmental disbenefits.

Second, up until the late 1980s, European Community (EC) environmental policy had developed essentially independently of EC agricultural policy (Buller, 1998c). Although certain changes in the CAP might have had positive environmental consequences (notably extensification), this was not the primary aim of these CAP changes. Agriculture under the CAP had often ‘escaped’, as it had under national policy, the mandatory imposition of regulatory controls relating to environmental quality maintenance or improvement. However, under the terms of the Maastricht Treaty of 1987 (implemented in 1993) and the 5^th Environmental Action Plan of the EU, environmental policy was required to be integrated into all EU policies including the CAP (EC, 1997a).

Finally, by the time Regulation 2078 was approved, a significant number of EU Member States had already embarked upon the establishment of agri-environmental schemes, either as a result of preceding EU legislation (such as Regulation 797/85) or independent of it (EC, 1991b). Regulation 2078 was thereby offered as a harmonising framework for those existing schemes, as well as the basis upon which new programmes and schemes could be elaborated. As such, and as this book will amply illustrate, it covered a far wider set of agri-environmental issues and agendas than the original Regulation, reflecting a broader spectrum of national agri-environmental concerns.

Income support

Regulation 2078 is also a mechanism for delivering income support for farmers who undertake low-income farm practices considered as being environmentally friendly. Here, the Regulation can be seen as responding to two distinct concerns. On the one hand, it is a response to the charge that the financial benefits both of European agriculture in general and of the CAP were being concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of essentially arable farmers (who were held to be the cause of the bulk of farm-based environmental damage). On the other hand, it is a response to a long standing European policy concern for the maintenance of farming practice and rural communities in marginal regions. As such, the Regulation follows in the tradition of the Less Favoured Areas (LFAs) Directive 268/75.

What does Regulation 2078 do?

Regulation 2078 makes possible the granting of EU co-funding aid for nationally implemented schemes that seek to encourage environmentally friendly forms of farming. Under Article 2 of the Regulation, the types of activity that might be eligible for aid are those that seek:

• to reduce substantially the use of fertilisers and/or plant protection products, or to keep to reductions already made, or to introduce or continue with organic farming methods;

• to change, by means other than those referred to in the previous point to more extensive forms of cropping (including forage production), to maintain extensive production methods introduced in the past, or to convert arable land into extensive grassland;

• to reduce the proportion of sheep and cattle per forage area;

• to use alternative farming practices compatible with the requirements of protection of the environment and natural resource, as well as maintaining the countryside and the landscape, or to rear animals of local breeds in danger of extinction;

• to ensure the upkeep of abandoned farmland or woodlands;

• to set-aside farmland for at least 20 years with a view to its use for purposes connected with the environment, in particular for the establishment of biotope reserves or natural parks or for the protection of hydrological systems;

• to manage land for public access and leisure activities.

In addition, aid may be given to improve the training of farmers with regard to farming or forestry practices compatible with the environment and for the establishment of demonstration projects, although implementation of this part of Regulation 2078 is optional for Member States. Further, Article 4 mentions a Support scheme for the cultivation and propagation of useful plants adapted to local conditions and threatened by genetic erosion. Article 6 provides for demonstration projects promoting farming practices compatible with the requirements on environment protection, and in particular the application of a code of good farming practice and organic farming practice.

This list covers a broad spectrum of agricultural activities aimed at promoting or maintaining environmentally friendly farming systems and thereby reducing the environmental impact of either intensification or abandonment of farming. Other issues targeted in the Regulation include landscape management and nature conservation, including conservation of plant and animal genetic resources. A measure to facilitate outdoor recreation completes the catalogue.

Member states were asked to design zonal programmes of at least five-year duration (Article 3). The concept of zonal programmes involves the idea of maximising positive effects of the measures on natural and environmental conditions by relating them to a concrete spatial context. Thus, the programmes should be targeted at sufficiently homogenous areas, they should contain a definition of the geographical area and a description of the natural, environmental and structural characteristics of the area; further, the specific programme objectives should be explained with regard to the characteristics of the targeted area. The agri-environmental programmes had to be submitted to the Commission for notification (Article 7). Once approved, the programmes were co-financed by the EU at 75% in Objective 1 regions and 50% in all other regions (Article 8).

In the breadth of its remit, Regulation 2078 thereby sought to bring together originally disparate policy measures such as extensification and various landscape management policies (de Putter, 1995; Baldock and Lowe, 1996; Scheele, 1996; Höll and von Meyer, 1996). Unlike Regulation 797/85, it was mandatory. Within one year (by July 1993) all Member States had to submit a national framework for its implementation as well as a detailed set of individual agri-environmental schemes.

A further change compared to previous EC policies relates to the fact that with Regulation 2078 EU-funding for AEP was shifted from the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF) Guidance section section to the EAGGF Guarantee section, suggesting that there would be access to a larger and more flexible budget for AEP than before (Baldock and Lowe, 1996). Expectations were expressed that agri-environmental policies would lead to a ‘greening of the CAP’, and that it would have positive side-effects with regard to social conditions in rural regions (Potter and Lobley, 1993; Robinson and Ilbery, 1993; Baldock, 1994; Reus et al, 1995; de Putter, 1995). Whether such a ‘greening’ process has, in fact, taken place is the subject of this book.

The structure of this book

In its analysis of implementation of Regulation 2078 in the EU, this book adopts both a country-specific focus by investigating the responses of individual EU Member States (and Switzerland) to EU AEP (Chs. 2-11) as well as a transnational focus by comparing and contrasting individual member state responses to Regulation 2078 (Ch. 12).

The order of the country-specific chapters in this book does not follow any preconceived notions about which countries should be treated ‘first’ or ‘last’, and we have consciously avoided clustering specific countries together (e.g. north European countries versus Mediterranean countries) in order not to detract the reader from the breadth and variety of approaches towards AEP implementation in individual EU Member States. As this book will highlight, however, ‘regional patterns’ of implementation can be identified, especially with regard to ‘old’ Member States versus ‘new’ ones (essentially emphasising the north-south divide already highlighted by Whitby, 1996b), countries with mountainous areas and/or substantial areas of LFAs versus countries or regions dominated by intensive agriculture, and countries with previous agri-environmental experience versus those with no or only limited experience (in theory, any of these regional patterns could have formed an alternative structure for the chapter sequence presented in this book).

In order to understand current implementation patterns of Regulation 2078 in individual Member States it is important to analyse pre-2078 AEP and conditions, as well as more complex ‘cultural’ issues related to national attitudes towards the countryside in Member States, and the processes that have led to the drafting and implementation of AEP. To investigate the latter, it is particularly important to identify both the specific actors in charge of implementing AEP within the framework of multi-layered environmental management processes in the European countryside (Wilson and Bryant, 1997), as well as understanding the response of the ‘recipients’ of agri-environmental policies (i.e. the farmers) towards Regulation 2078 and the role that these farmers may have played in the implementation of AEP across the EU (Morris and Potter, 1995; Wilson, 1997a). Each of the country chapters (Chs. 2-11) follows a loose structure based on these issues, usually with an emphasis on:

• the agricultural and environmental situation in the countryside prior to AEP implementation

• the implementation of pre-2078 AEP and associated policy mechanisms with implications for countryside management (where applicable)

• patterns and processes of implementation of Regulation 2078

• the ‘success’ of AEP implemented under Regu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations and Explanation of Terms
• 1 Introduction: the emergence of Regulation 2078
• 2 France: farm production and rural product as key factors influencing agri-environmental policy
• 3 Denmark: implementation of new agri-environmental policy based on Regulation 2078
• 4 Sweden: agri-environmental policy and the production of landscape qualities
• 5 Greece: late implementation of agri-environmental policies
• 6 United Kingdom: from agri-environmental policy shaper to policy receiver?
• 7 Germany: complex agri-environmental policy in a federal system
• 8 Spain: first tentative steps towards an agri-environmental programme
• 9 Austria: towards an environmentally sound agriculture
• 10 Switzerland: agri-environmental policy outside the European Union
• 11 Portugal: agri-environmental policy and the maintenance of biodiversity-rich extensive farming systems
• 12 Regulation 2078: patterns of implementation
• 13 Conclusions: agri-environmental policy beyond Regulation 2078
• Bibliography
• Index