The EU and the Common Agricultural Policy: Continued Legitimacy or 'Renationalisation'?

The EU as an organization has been confronted with a range of criticisms, both with respect to the authority it exercises in general as regarding particular policy outcomes, such as its dealings with the economic and financial crisis and the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Instigated by production surpluses, budget crises, international trade pressures, and public opinion the CAP was reformed repeatedly in the last 40 years, but it remains among the most important European policies (with still over 40% of the budget devoted to it). The CAP has with its own set of norms, rules and principles. While CAP-reforms mainly reflect intense debate on the goals and instruments of the policy, they partly also reflect debate on the authority the EU exercises in the field of agriculture (relative to its member states). Both Commission proposals and member state demands have partly been framed in terms of the ‘renationalization’ of the CAP in this respect, uncovering the underlying issue of legitimacy (the justification of authority exercised). This paper will first investigate the justificatory discourses that were applied by EU institutions to make a legitimacy claim for the transfer of member state authority regarding agricultural policy to the European level as well as the arguments member states applied to justify their acceptance. Next, a number of reform debates will be selected and analysed in which the ‘renationalization’ of the CAP was discussed, in terms of transferring part of the decision-making power (but also the financing) back to the member state level. This issue has become increasingly important in the last two decades with the enlargement of the EU and the critique that one-size policy does not fit all member states. This analysis uncovers the legitimating strategies applied and contributes to explaining the survival of the CAP as a ‘common’ policy.