Defining the policies of the Common Agricultural policy : a historical study

Abstract

To most people grain prices constitute a rather prosaic topic. Nonetheless, there were strong emotions attached to the subject every time the most prominent political figures of the European Economic Community (EEC) had to take decisions relating to the issue. For instance, Commission President Walter Hallstein has recounted one o f the toughest and longest Council of Ministers negotiations in the EEC, which lasted from 18 December 1961 to 14 January 1962, like this: “Forty-five separate meetings, 7 o f them at night; a total o f 137 hours o f discussion, with 214 hours in subcommittees; 582,000pages o f documents; 3 heart attacks - the record is staggering. It is also, I think, quite striking in its testimony to the whole spirit o f our enterprise”. This, and the logic quoted above, is illustrative of the heavy political weight that the issue carried in the EEC, and nobody disputed this logic. Grain prices became the centrepiece o f the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and the CAP has undisputedly been the centrepiece of the EEC ever since its creation.