Thursday, May 17, 2012

Backlash against open government

It's no real surprise that there has been a backlash against transparency and open government in the CAP and that the group at farmsubsidy.org who try to shine light in dark corners are facing greater difficulties following court cases: Transparency

Revealing details about payments to individual farm businesses discloses how much some large businesses and food processing firms are receiving from the taxpayer. The bigger you are, the more you get. Of course, it could be argued that the CAP is a very inefficient way of delivering income supplements and that if it is there to promote competitiveness, more is likely to go to bigger farms which tend to be more efficient (and also have a better record in areas like animal welfare).

If one was designing the policy again today, we wouldn't end up with what we've got. But we are constrained by starting from where we are in trying to make reforms.

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