Catalyst for Change or Impediment? Experts and early attempts at CAP Reform

Since its inception in 1958, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has been one of the most controversial policy areas and has faced periodic crises in policy and budgetary matters. Expertise has been an essential element of agricultural policy-making given the complexity and technicality of the field. The Commission was dependent on experts to collect and process data. It also relied on their advice and specialized information for the day-to-day management of the policy but also for defining policy options and designing reform proposals. Transnational societies of agricultural experts, including farming representatives and scientists, were thus increasingly involved in CAP Policy-making from the late 1960s both formally via the advisory committees and contacts with farm organisation officials, and informally via ad hoc expert groups and committees. The paper will look at the dual role of these agricultural experts in the early attempts at CAP reform. It will argue that the lack of genuine reform of the CAP in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in large part from the two conflicting positions of agricultural experts on the subject: One, mainly represented by scientists, and in particular agricultural economists, argued in favour of reform in order to curb the skyrocketing costs, surplus production and assuage the detrimental consequences for EEC consumers and producers in non member states; the other, represented by farm organisation officers, argued for the status quo of the policy in order to protect their vested interests.