The CAP has always been a policy with global reach. In its initial post-war form it was designed to stimulate European production and support European farmers but the trade-distorting effects of that policy clearly had an impact on the rest of the world. Successive reforms of the CAP have seen all these effects disappear as the policy became more market-orientated, and with tougher global rules at the international level through the World Trade Organization (WTO), the impact of the CAP on the developing world is very different than in the past.
The focus now is firmly on supporting our partners in the developing world as well as farmers closer to home. For example, Europe offers extremely favourable market access conditions for countries across the developing world, giving duty-free and quota-free access to all Least Developed Countries (LDCs), and offering unilateral concessions to developing countries. Export subsidies for European producers have long since disappeared, and all exports are now firmly market driven.
Myths still persist
And yet the myths about the distorting effects of the CAP on the developing world persist. It is often easier to blame supposed imports from the EU for declining national production than to address the real causes, which can be anything from government policy to supply chain issues to animal or plant health issues such as avian influenza. The EU is also far from being the only global agri-food player, and imports from other countries such as the US, China or Brazil may in fact be the real culprits.
Even the EU's domestic policy actions through the CAP can come in for criticism from abroad. Market measures are still permitted, in limited forms, to support specific sectors in times of crisis. This was the case for the dairy sector for example in 2015 and 2016, when the European Commission intervened by buying up stocks of skimmed milk powder (SMP), sales of which were severely hit by Russian ban on SMP imports, among other factors. Without this action, many European dairy firms would have collapsed.
But concerns that the stocks of SMP will now somehow be ‘dumped' on Africa are completely unfounded. The simple fact is that African production of SMP is not enough to meet growing demand: self-sufficiency rates in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, vary from 79% in Malawi to 39% in Nigeria. Many African countries have a substantial shortfall of a number of agricultural products, such as milk, which is an important source of nutrition, and which can only be met through imports, from whatever source. The reality is that less than 10% of EU exports of SMP are destined to Sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, these are private sales, and do not come from EU public stocks. And if the product is not available from private sources in the EU, it is usually sourced from other milk producing regions of the world, such as New Zealand.
Encouraging trade from developing countries
Europe has developed Economic Partnership Agreements – trade agreements – that are carefully crafted to allow partner countries in the developing world to protect their sensitive agricultural products from liberalisation. This means in effect that many sensitive agricultural sectors are excluded entirely from such agreements – ensuring local production is not destroyed by imports – or that governments can react quickly and effectively to support sectors that hit by sudden increases in imports.
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