Reformist context, veto players and symbolic wins: the case of CAP 2023-2027

The Brexit, EU’s green deal and the pandemic recovery package have facilitated transformation towards greater sustainability in several policy areas by impacting the actor preferences and the decision-making setting. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the reformist context on EU’s agricultural policy by focusing on the CAP 2023-2027 reform. The paper argues that the reformist context has strengthened the position of pro-reform actors in the relations between and within the Commission, Council and European parliament, but that the impact depended on the extent to which status quo preferred by conservative players was actually changed and negotiaitons setting including various issue linkages and veto players. The analysis of preferences of the three institutions and outcomes of the negotiations process in the period 2018-2021 supports the argument and further shows how the outcomes while falling short of more substantive reforms have introduced several symbolic wins corresponding to the attempts of the reformist players to save their image and the image of CAP. The results indicate that more reformist CAP developments could be achieved by delinking the process from budget negotiations.