What does the rise of the populist right mean for the CAP?

Alan Matthews writes about the changing political landscape in the EU.  ‘The right-wing parties in power or close to power are generally Eurosceptic, though on a spectrum ranging from soft to hard Euroscepticism. This will inevitably influence the debate on the future CAP.

These parties favour the traditional priorities of agricultural policy, such as income support, productivism and food sovereignty, while objecting to Green Deal objectives. They also seek to repatriate powers from Brussels and thus favour greater subsidiarity in the CAP. On the other hand, they also favour a strong budget for farmers, but they may split on whether this should be funded by national budgets or by the CAP.

A more nationalistic stance in net budget contributor countries can put at risk the scale of transfers under the main transfer policies of CAP and cohesion. The Commission's MFF proposal keeps the amount of funding for transfer policies broadly constant in current prices. And its proposed allocation formula for these funds under the NRPF Regulation generally increases the transfers from richer to poorer countries though with notable exceptions (e.g. Belgium and Netherlands will get more while Czechia, Slovenia and Estonia will get less than in the current MFF period).

With the shift favouring Eurosceptic parties across the EU, net contributor countries may well see merit in a lower CAP (and cohesion) budget where the saving in their national contributions to the EU budget would more than allow them increase their national funding to their farmers. Both the scale of funding for transfer policies as well as the allocation formula will come under increasing scrutiny as the MFF negotiations proceed.’

One commentator observed: ‘From an analytical perspective, it is striking that food sovereignty—a concept rooted in left-wing peasant movements and their critiques of globalised, industrial agriculture—is increasingly taken up by right-wing parties. This illustrates how normative concepts can be reinterpreted and repurposed across ideological lines, often becoming detached from their original foundations. It shows why paying attention to how and why terminology travels, changes meaning, and is co-opted in political debates really matters.’

A Spanish perspective wax: ‘Speaking from the Spanish case (a net CAP receiver for 30+ years, with a lot to lose from re-nationalisation), the far-right narrative is that Brussels is dominated by “woke” elites pushing an agenda perceived as anti-farmer. By re-nationalising, they expect to regain sovereignty over what gets funded and under which conditions, so that support better matches their (climate change denialist) ideology. At the end of the day, I don’t think they care much if the pie gets smaller; what matters is choosing who gets a slice and being able to claim the medal of “defending farmers”. Something they can never do under the current CAP after years of demonising Brussels. Basically, nationalist clientelism.’