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Opinions expressed in the case studies and any errors or omissions
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> Case
Studies main page
> Introduction
ON THIS PAGE:
> I. The problem in context: how does France participate in multilateral trade negotiations?
> II. The players and their role: setting the French political economy variables
> Policy-makers’ preferences
> Institutional design
> Vested interests and organized groups
> III. Challenges and the outcome: the forming of French positions in the Cancún market access negotiations
> French political priorities
> Agriculture: ‘the chicken and egg story’
> Non-agricultural market access: the lonely long-distance
runner
> Services: hot political agenda, cold bureaucratic work
> IV. Lessons for others
|
I. The problem in context: how does France
participate in multilateral trade negotiations? back to top
France is a major trading power and has
steadily followed a long-term path of trade liberalization since the
launch of the European Common Market. ‘France’s exports rank fourth
for goods and third for services, with a structural surplus representing
approximately 2 per cent of GDP. Five millions jobs are based on
exports. Foreign companies are responsible for one-third of our
industrial production.’(1)
While not directly engaged in negotiations in the WTO, France
participates in the European common trade policy and is deemed a ‘pivotal’
state, particularly on agriculture. Yet little research attention has
been devoted to the political economy of trade reform in France.
This study surveys French decision-making
relating to trade, from summer 2002 to the Cancún WTO Ministerial. It
focuses on market access issues, which by no means embrace France’s
trade negotiating priorities. Following Rodrik, we assume that ‘all
the political economy models provide a particular story about how
organized groups or individual voters can take political action to
reinforce or alleviate the income-distributional consequences of trade
flows…. The conclusion in common is: trade is not free because
politically influential groups can be made better off by policy
interventions on trade.’(2)
One of the suggestions presented in this paper
is that standard assumptions about the influence of organized groups on
trade reforms are globally verified: France’s political economy
entails no cultural exception. Another suggestion is that institutional
settings, both at national and at European Union (EU) level,
substantially affect the outcome of French decision-making.
II. The players and
their role: setting the French political economy variables
back to top
Conventional models root the demand side of
trade policy in individuals’ preferences, channelled through organized
groups, and the supply side in policy-makers’ preferences expressed
through the institutional structure. While acknowledging that ‘values,
identities, and attachments, play an important role in explaining the
variations in preferences over trade’,(3)
this paper concentrates on decision-making, thus dropping the analysis
of French public opinion preferences. One reason is that opinion polls
do not reveal, prima facie, striking differences between French
and other European opinions on trade, the WTO, or even the Common
Agricultural Policy (CAP).(4)
Policy-makers’ preferences
back to top
Trade and agriculture. Players
acknowledge that a consensus exists among policy-makers: agricultural
goods are not considered common goods, because what is at stake
outweighs trade interests. President Chirac of France often stated this
vision:
It is essential to remember that agriculture does
not reduce to the trading framework in which international negotiations
too often pretend to lock it…. Before involving international trade,
debates over agriculture, on the global scale, are really debates over
food sovereignty, which relies above all on agricultural development.
The goal that we must pursue in agricultural matters is to achieve food
security for all. Trade negotiations must not lose sight of it.(5)
Diplomatic advisers to the Trade and
Agriculture Ministers explain, ‘The WTO negotiations always cloud
political issues with coded language. Behind technical negotiations,
what is always at stake is the very legitimacy of agricultural policies.
France systematically reformulates what the negotiation really is about,
politically.’
Trade and diplomacy. The French elite
may grant second-rate status to trade policy. ‘Trade policy is not a
French notion; trade is considered a by-product of diplomacy’,
suggests Hubert Testard, Deputy Chief Trade Negotiator. Players admit
that French trade policy integrates broader foreign policy options. Some
mention the stakes of transatlantic relations and development policies
in that regard.
Trade and partisan politics. Players do
not support the claim of a right/left partisan divide on trade.(6) ‘The
right may seem slightly more flexible on public services and the left on
agriculture. Such nuances are infinitesimal. There is no French
political divide on trade policy’, asserts Philippe Gros, permanent
delegate to the WTO.
Institutional design back to top
For Damania and Frederiksson,(7)
‘to influence trade policy, special interest groups must influence all
such (collective or individual) actors with veto rights over policy
changes. The empirical literature…. has ignored the fact that trade
policy is determined by more than one veto player.’
Three features are particularly relevant for
trade policy within the French democratic framework. The French
Constitution grants pre-eminence to the president, over the government,
on foreign policy (domaine réservé;). The Trade Minister(8)
runs a specialized administration (DREE)(9)
within a strongly institutionalized interministerial decision-making
process: a secretariat (SGCI)(10)
headed by the Prime Minister’s office exclusively clears French
positions on EU policies. Parliament’s involvement is slight.
As an EU member state, France promotes its
positions through the EU Council of Ministers (Foreign Affairs); trade
policy decisions are prepared by the Article 133 Committee, where the EU
Commission consults with member states; other Council formations are
also relevant, particularly those relating to agriculture, environment
and development. To that end, building coalitions with other EU member
states is needed. A good bilateral dialogue with the EU Commission, at
all levels, is also considered a decisive channel.
Players adapt their strategy to this
multi-dimensional institutional design.
Lobbying strategies. ‘We
simultaneously promote our positions at all levels’, says Francis
Delemotte, Head of International Trade of UIC.(11)
Marc Maindrault, his counterpart at MEDEF,(12)
adds: ‘Many businesses privilege trade lobbying through European
Industrial Branches Federations. These are the heart of power: they hold
the information that the Commission needs to elaborate its proposals.
Other important business organizations can influence the Commission, for
instance the European Round Table.’ Hence the lobbying efforts may
prove asymmetrical: ‘Offensive sectors tend to go to Brussels, while
defensive one speak both in Brussels and Paris. So the government hears
much more from the latter’, analyzes Laurence Dubois Destrizais,
Assistant Secretary for Multilateral Affairs, Trade Ministry.
Bureaucratic influences. The
confrontation of administrations’ views can modify the influence of
vested interests: some administrations represent selected political
constituencies, others global interests. ‘The inter-ministerial
process allows us to blend purely conceptual approaches of trade
liberalization with grounded facts and sector-specific stakes. It makes
our positions more accurate,’ thinks Fabrice Gourdellier, Head of the
Trade Policy Unit of SGCI. Most players support this claim.
Political strategy. Positions taken by
the government must be interpreted against the background of EU
competences. Sylvain Lambert, diplomatic adviser to the Agriculture
Minister, stresses that ‘France does not talk as a first-rank
negotiator. Its role is not to substitute for the EU negotiator but to
nuance his arguments, remind him of priorities and signal red lines.’
Hubert Testard remarks that ‘We are not overall defensive on the WTO.
But since 80% of the negotiating time is spent on agriculture, the
political level is forced to intervene more on it, which gives a
defensive tone to our positions.’ Otherwise, the government’s
positions on trade must be understood within a global dialogue with the
Commission: trade negotiations are but one dimension within EU policies
(CAP, competition, economic co-ordination, fiscal discipline and so on).
Bilateral relations. Member state
coalitions are decisive. Within the wider Franco-German dialogue, the
Trade Minister regularly consults with German counterparts. ‘Germany
is the only country with which we have such an institutional dialogue’,
observes Philippe Gros. Players suggest that the Franco-German
agreements on CAP reform were decisive in the making of EU positions for
Cancún. But they also stress a difficult Franco-German co-ordination on
trade, due to opposing defensive priorities. Thus, case-by-case
coalitions are also built with other countries, depending on issues.
Vested interests and organized groups
back to top
Vocal agricultural lobbying
‘We make sure that our voice is heard at the
national and European levels’,(13)
claims Patrick Ferrere, Director General of FNSEA.(14)
Players see the French agricultural lobbying on WTO negotiations as
better organized and more efficient than other sectors. Agricultural
organizations maintain a constant public pressure on the government at
each step of the trade negotiations. What is at stake? Ferrere explains:
‘France is the agricultural country in
Europe. Our agriculture represents roughly 25 per cent of Europe’s
total agriculture, and accounts for 400,000 equivalent full-time jobs
involving 1.2 million people through seasonal activities. The agro-food
industry employs 600,000 people. Both factors make it the first French
employer. These incomes have multiplying effects on all our rural life.
Therefore, recognizing agriculture was, and remains, the condition for
French participation in European integration. Due to higher labour,
environmental, sanitary and quality standards, our agriculture bears
higher costs than anywhere else. This is why, since its inception,
Europe has twinned its trade and agriculture policies: controlling
market access is a prerequisite to organizing agriculture.
In 2000, agriculture and the agro-food
industry accounted for 2.3% and 3% of French GDP, respectively. France
received 22% of the € 44.5 billion spent by the EU-15 in 2002 on the
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Benefits from subsidies are highly
concentrated. Main public supports for market regulation break down as:
arable crops (57%), bovine meat (22%) and the dairy sector (6%). With a
decreasing number of farms since 1990, the average farm payments ‘almost
doubled in real terms, to reach € 18,679 in 2003, 81% of which came
from the EU’.(15)
The highest farm payment averages were geographically very
concentrated.(16)
‘Public support for our agriculture has been
very substantially reduced since 1992’, observes François de la
Gueronnière, Deputy Director for International Affairs at the
Agricultural Ministry. ‘First, because price support as a CAP tool has
been much reduced since 1992; second, because subsidies and production
have been essentially decoupled, which eliminates most of the trade
distorting effects.’ This analysis is consistent with OECD findings.(17)
Hence virtual high stake ‘losers’ as a
result of liberalization are increasingly concentrated. Conversely,
players hardly identify a ‘winning side’ from agricultural
negotiations.
First, the EU is not seen as a prospective
international market player. ‘We really target the EU-25 market: 450
million consumers’, says Patrick Ferrere. Gueronnière adds, ‘Since
the Uruguay Round the assertion of our agricultural export vocation
faded. The agricultural surplus was then viewed as a major asset to
balance our current account and strengthen the exchange rate. It is no
longer the case. We now maintain a non-agricultural trade surplus and
the euro took over from the franc, which eliminated the exchange rate
problem. So our focus in trade negotiations shifted to the defensive
side.’ Moreover, major French agro-food exports, such as wine and
spirits,(18)
do not rely on CAP supports.
Second, throughout CAP reforms, structural
contradictions with the WTO Agricultural Agreement remained. Hubert
Testard observes: ‘There was a structural incompatibility between the
Agreement on Agriculture and historical CAP instruments. This
essentially ended with the 2003 CAP reform.’ As Ferrere stresses,
First, the WTO undermines the CAP concepts of
price and production support. Second, it does not acknowledge the supply
side management limiting EU production since 1984, yet this allowed the
Cairns Group and the United States to take over former European exports
in third markets. Third, market access negotiations focus on tariffs and
ignore the European demands for labelling of food origin, geographical
indications and sanitary requirements.
Third, the US instruments are considered
under-disciplined. ‘With deficiency payments, marketing loans, food
aid, export credit, the US farmers get the full set of possible supports’,
adds Ferrere. For all players, no domestic political support for
agricultural reform can be built without strictly balancing the EU and
US concessions.
Weak corporate lobbying
Players remark: ‘Businesses are silent’;
‘MEDEF’s negotiating positions are much too general’; ‘Businessmen
almost never take up multilateral issues with ministers’; and ‘The
president of MEDEF never speaks on the WTO.’
Jacques Desponts, chairman of MEDEF’s and
UNICE’s(19)
WTO committees, considers that
French business lobbying remains domestically
centred. It is extremely hard to have businesses express priorities on
trade negotiations. The first MEDEF position was constructed for Seattle
and we achieved a similar position with UNICE. Yet French companies do
not invest enough time in UNICE compared with northern Europeans. As a
result, they are cashing the horserace bets in reverse order: we get ‘agriculture,
industry and services’ instead of ‘services, industry and
agriculture’.
Other business players concur. Dominique
Jacomet, Vice-Chairman of UIT,(20)
notes:
Internationalization in our sector is rooted in
the multilateral system. We have strong interests, offensive and
defensive, in WTO rules: TRIPS enforcement, tariff peak elimination,
anti-dumping…. So we are very active internationally, at all levels.
However, the priority given to agriculture hardly allows France to
promote our interests.
Why are industrial and services sectors not
better at trade lobbying?
First, WTO market access may have lost
relevance. Hubert Testard notes that ‘a major change since the Uruguay
Round comes from the trillion dollars of accumulated foreign direct
investment, mainly involving multinational companies. They reduced
pressure on market access. The big benefits of tariff reductions would
now fall on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), less influential
than multinational groups within MEDEF.’ Others observe that France
trades mostly within the EU, with preferential trading zones and OECD
countries maintaining average low tariffs.
Second, evaluating the gains does not prove to
be easy. ‘It is hard to measure robustly national gains from trade
liberalization. Some statistics cannot be isolated from the EU’s. It
is almost impossible to reach a simple measure of gains in the services
sector. Thus policy-makers must balance certain and measurable losses in
agriculture against vague and uncertain gains in other sectors’, says
Mathilde Lemoine, economic adviser to the Trade Minister.
Third, the lobbying strategies of businesses
vary. Marc Maindrault analyzes:
MEDEF permanently updates its negotiating
priorities with information from members’ organizations. But the
information is uneven because sectoral interests are diverse. Some
branches efficiently monitor their WTO interests, others less so. Some
have domestic and European objectives, without a stake in the WTO. Some
federations represent one, or two, major groups: these have their own
international strategies, without relying much on collective action.
Major leaders directly discuss their important issues with the Trade
Commissioner.
Politically efficient NGOs
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in
France are considered influential on policy-making. Mathilde Lemoine
explains: ‘They have a political approach to the negotiations. They
usually focus on a single issue, for instance access to medicine. They
bring in experience on the ground, especially on the development
dimension. They have reactive international networks: policy-makers
understand that NGOs may promote their political priorities more swiftly
than heavy diplomatic channels.’
French authorities thus hold regular meetings
with ‘civil society’, associating NGOs, businesses, trade unions and
members of Parliament in trade negotiations. Business lobbies deplore
the fact that an indiscriminate process grants disproportionate
influence to NGOs. ‘Businesses make trade, not NGOs’, says Jacques
Desponts.
III. Challenges
and the outcome: the forming of French positions in the Cancún market
access negotiations back to top
This section analyzes the way in which the
decision-making process translated French political objectives into the
Cancún market access negotiations (agriculture, industry, services).
For each major negotiating step, France took part in the consensus
provided by the EU member states to the Commission.
French political priorities
back to top
Re-elected in 2002, President Chirac expressed
his priorities for the Doha Development Agenda, particularly during
France’s presidency of G8 in 2003. (i) He gave his overall vision of
the trading system: trade is good for the economy if ‘openness to
trade, defined in the WTO framework, comes with precise rules of the
game’.(21)
(ii) He drew the French ‘red lines’: ‘France favours free trade
but not under any conditions. It trustfully takes up the Doha Round and
will be vigilant on three sectors: cultural goods, which can never be
considered common trading goods; agriculture, in order that the Doha
Decision be compatible with the CAP; services, so that openness does not
undermine great public services as education and health.’(22)
(iii) He asserted his vision of development, focusing on the needs of
the poorest countries, especially African countries. In a major address,
the president made three proposals for Africa’s trade: ‘A moratorium
decided by all developed countries on destabilizing export subsidies
directed towards Africa, during the WTO negotiations’; ‘a special
and privileged trade treatment for Africa’ through ‘a common and
unique’ preferential scheme amongst developed countries; a new
endeavour against commodities prices volatility, ‘in particular cotton’.(23)
The government promoted the presidential
options. Trade Minister François Loos stated: ‘we want trade
liberalization to come with the laying of a regulation’.(24)
He subsequently insisted on his priority on access to medicines as a
major regulatory issue for the WTO. The Agriculture Minister defended
the compatibility between development and the CAP.(25)
The government rejected the Cairns Group’s arguments: ‘No, the CAP
does not strangle the poor countries!’(26)
Agriculture: ‘the chicken and egg story’
back to top
‘The chicken is the CAP, the egg is the WTO’,
the EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy often said,(27)
pointing out systemic links between the internal and external dimensions
of agricultural reform. The French priority was really the chicken. ‘The
WTO was not really on the political agenda. What politically mattered
was the CAP reform proposed by the Commission. WTO negotiations were but
one of the many variables of CAP reform’, assesses Fabrice Gourdellier.
However, the EU Commission saw Cancún as a deadline motivating the
reform. The Agriculture Minister explained to the French Parliament that
‘nothing that has happened in Brussels over the past few months can be
understood unless it is linked with the discussions before the WTO’.(28)
Chicken
The Franco-German dialogue was decisive for
CAP reform. Step one occurred in October 2002, when the German
Chancellor and the French President agreed to cap the CAP budget for
2006-13. Sylvain Lambert explains: ‘At stake was the future of the acquis
communautaire in the EU-25. Germany accepted the phasing in of
farmer’s direct payments for new members. France agreed to keep the
CAP budget under control with a stabilized global envelope and budget
correctors if the ceilings are reached.’
Step two resulted from the Luxembourg CAP
reform of June 2003. France had vigorously opposed a deep reform,
initially not planned to take place before 2006 (Agenda 2000). Minister
Gaymard made it clear: ‘About the evolutions of the CAP, I wish to
restate our complete opposition to the decoupling proposed by the
Commission.’(29)
Nevertheless,
the Franco-German dialogue reached an agreement endorsing the idea of
‘partial decoupling’, which paved the way for the Luxembourg
agreement. The general ‘decoupling’ of subsidies was decided, with
room for manoeuvre left to governments willing to keep minimal links
between subsidies and production levels. Patrick Ferrere stresses that
‘farmers resented Luxembourg as a major fracture: the EU was no longer
willing to regulate agricultural markets and shifted supports from
production to farm incomes. This raises a fundamental question of the
legitimacy of subsidies: farmers want to work, not to sit and wait.’
Nevertheless, ‘the reform came about without dramatization or major
conflict’, observes Sylvain Lambert.
Egg
France systematically engaged the WTO
negotiations in defending the CAP status quo, while never departing from
the EU consensus.
First, the EU negotiating offer included: a
Uruguay Round tariff reduction formula — a 55% reduction in domestic
subsidies and a 45% reduction in export subsidies. Farmers criticized an
offer ‘which exhausted the full room for manoeuvre of the European Union
before the real start of the negotiations’.(30)
The French government nevertheless endorsed it.(31)
Second, Stuart Harbinson, chair of the WTO
Agriculture Negotiating Group, presented two draft ‘modalities’ for
negotiations: France, the EU, and a majority of WTO members rejected
both as unbalanced.
Third, at the G8 Evian summit the EU had
endorsed the French proposals for Africa, including a moratorium on all
destabilizing export subsidies. ‘The Africa initiative signalled our
readiness to move, provided all others would. It is still on the table’,
analyzes Anne Cazala, diplomatic adviser to Trade Minister Loos. But the
G8 stonewalled and watered down the proposals and the moratorium was not
agreed.
Fourth, the CAP reform changed the EU
negotiator’s mandate. For Sylvain Lambert,
the EU had fully delivered for Cancún.
Looking at the facts instead of ideology, European agriculture is
the only sector that has been reformed three times since the Uruguay
Round. Meanwhile the United States raised support 70% and partially
re-coupled their subsidies with the Farm Bill. This refutes
arguments about our alleged defensiveness on agriculture. But
reforming the CAP cannot be the only game in town. So we refused to
pay once in Brussels, twice in Geneva.
The fifth crucial step resulted from the
transatlantic agriculture agreement of August 2003. It departed from
previous EU positions, especially with the concept of a ‘blended
tariffs formula’. France was surprised by the Commission’s proposal
but did not reject the move. The Agriculture and Trade Minister jointly
‘took note of the agreement between the EU Commission and the American
negotiator on some of the topics of agricultural negotiations in the WTO’
and stated that ‘the government will exert the highest vigilance in
respect of the mandate given by the Council to the Commission, who
negotiates on behalf on the European Union, and in particular in respect
of commitments made in the Luxembourg agreement of 26 June, reforming
the CAP’.(32)
Laurence Dubois Destrizais explains: ‘The Commission presented the EU-US
agreement as a fait accompli. But while it was a clear change of
strategy, the Commission had not crossed the red lines.’
Eventually, Cancún failed before agriculture
was negotiated. ‘The agreement between the transatlantic negotiators
had shown that the USA were not ready to put figures on a “modality
paper,”’ thinks Sylvain Lambert. ‘This is why agriculture was not
discussed in Cancún.’
So the egg did not challenge the chicken.
Non-agricultural market access: the lonely
long-distance runner back to top
‘Ministers Mer and Loos launched an
evaluation process to assess our offensive and defensive commercial
interests. It helped progress towards a more offensive French attitude
in spite of our agricultural sensitivity. The tariff negotiation was the
main focus of businesses, yet they could hardly reach an aggregated
vision of their offensive interests’, relates Christophe Lecourtier,
international counsellor to the Economy and Finance Minister. ‘Under
low pressure from businesses, the process was essentially fed by efforts
from a few industrial sectors and economists to measure France’s
interests’, reminds Laurence Dubois Destrizais.
The evaluation was positive.
The net job surplus derived from trade and
investment is estimated between 500,000 and 600,000 net job creations
over the last ten years. It is a very clear positive result, which leads
the Ministry of Economy and Finance to promote, both in the domestic
inter-ministerial debate and the negotiations, a globally offensive
attitude, even though we have an agricultural sensitivity. We also
assessed our defensive industrial interests, which involve some labour-intensive
sectors, and they represent less than 10% of the tariff lines.
‘We are resolutely offensive and we argue
for the elimination of all duties over 15%’, declared Minister Loos.(33)
Hence, while most of its political capital was invested in agriculture,
France fed the EU demands for ambitious industrial results. It supported
the first Commission proposal of a tariff ‘compression mechanism’ (a
complex harmonizing formula within tariffs bands) and sectoral
negotiations for textile, clothing and footwear. In April 2003, France
demanded improvements in the negotiating modalities proposed by
Ambassador Girard, chair of the non-agricultural market access (NAMA)
negotiating group.(34)
In August 2003, France supported a transatlantic
agreement endorsing the previous US call for a ‘Swiss formula’.
In Cancún, France and the EU asked for improvements in Chairman Derbez’s
draft ‘modalities’ for NAMA. Cancún’s failure left the business
unfinished.
Services: hot political agenda, cold
bureaucratic work back to top
French political interest in services goes
back to the Uruguay Round ‘cultural exception’ debate. Priorities
were crystal clear for Cancún: two out of three presidential ‘red
lines’ (culture and public services) fell on the services
negotiations. They were shared by policy-makers and unchallenged by
businesses.(35)
Cultural diversity objectives were enshrined in the EU negotiating
directives and Commissioner Lamy broadly shared the French position on
public services.(36)
France also promoted offensive demands. Minister Loos stressed: ‘France
is the world’s third service exporter. The sector now provides 72% of
jobs against 57% in 1980. We have an excellent negotiating position
since the EU has already reached a high level of liberalization. Our
objective is reciprocity from other countries, taking into account their
level of development.’(37)
Nevertheless, France experienced strong NGO
pressure during the preparation of the European services offer. Major
campaigns were initiated against the General Agreement on Trade in
Services (GATS) at national and EU levels.(38)
NGOs asked for transparency of the EU offer and argued in defence of
public services, national regulatory rights and access to basic services
in developing countries. The campaigns had political effects. When the
EU released its offer to the WTO (April 2003), the ‘AGCS [GATS]-free
campaign’ could claim fifty French local government areas (four
regions, twenty départements, twenty-six municipalities) as
self-declared ‘GATS-free zones’. Members of parliament put questions
to the government. The political debate then — temporarily — faded after
the release of the Commission proposals on an NGO website.
The political debate stimulated a heavy
inter-ministerial process, but problems were not found where the NGOs
had indicated. Fabrice Gourdellier relates,
We started in November 2002 organizing sectoral
meetings to identify the limits of our 1994 commitments, check the
corresponding legislations, and assess our negotiating margins. In the
end, we narrowed down to six sensitive issues needing discussion with
the Commission. For the decisive 133 Committee meeting, only one
technical problem was left, on Mode 4. We were not alone amongst member
states. So the issue went to the Council of Ministers which eventually
adopted the offer, with an interpretative statement. Mode 4 was
especially difficult in the inter-ministerial debate because of
conflicting bureaucratic cultures: DREE was unfamiliar with migration
policies while the Department of Populations and Migrations had barely
confronted the European process, much less the WTO.
Eventually, the services negotiations became
peripheral to Cancún core political issues.
IV. Lessons for
others back to top
On its road to Cancún, France stuck to the
European consensus and its long-term commitment towards progressive
trade liberalization and multilateral negotiations. In so doing, French
decision-making on trade revealed the following features.
- Overall, in keeping with theoretical predictions, protected
producers are more likely to organize themselves efficiently when
their interests are concentrated and their consumers dispersed. In a
context of declining agricultural support, concentrated potential
‘losers’ proved very active. ‘There is a clear vision from the
political level that our interests in the negotiations mainly
involve agriculture, thus are fundamentally defensive’, confirms
Anne Cazala.
- The national bureaucratic process influences decision-making in
mitigating vested interests’ influence: economic analysis and the
inter-ministerial co-ordination importantly contributed to the
identification of France’s interests.
- The EU negotiating competences substantially impact the
strategy of organized groups and the shaping of their interactions
with domestic policy-makers and administrations.
- Consistency with Rodrik’s claim (1994) that ‘there is a
natural status quo bias to policy-making whenever some of the
gainers (or losers) from reform cannot be identified ex ante’.
Most players’ perceptions support the claim. ‘Eventually our
effort objectively to measure gains and losses was partly undermined
by the macro-economic context of recession and the political
interference of the CAP reform’, notes Christophe Lecourtier. The
textile industry echoes: ‘Until Cancún we intensely promoted
ambitious tariffs negotiations. There we felt overwhelmed by
non-industrial stakes. Since then, the worsening economy, China’s
soaring exports, and the approaching deadline for quota elimination
changed the mood. Our companies are turning to more defensive
demands.’ For Philippe Gros, ‘Our decision-making often leads us
to favour defensive interests in the negotiations. A key problem is
that the political level lacks a real “control board” to balance
economic interests objectively.’
- France may lack more institutionalized
government-to-business consultations on trade policy. Emmanuelle Butaud,
director for international affairs at UIT, remarks: ‘Consultations
take place on a case-by-case basis, usually under short notice linked
with the 133 Committee’s agenda, and with little feedback afterwards.’
All business and agriculture representatives deplore the fact that they
are denied access to official membership status in the French
delegations to the WTO ministerial conferences. Business representatives
therefore suggest that institutionalized consultations would
significantly help in streamlining decision-making at national level and
with interaction with the EU.
NOTES:
1.- H. Testard, ‘Notes Bleues de Bercy’,
N-269, April 2004. back to text
2.- Rodrik (1994), ‘What Does the Political
Economy Literature on Trade Policy (Not) Tell Us that We Ought To Know?’,
NBER, 1994. back to text
3.- Mayda and Rodrik (2002), ‘Why Are Some
People (and Countries) More Protectionist than Others?’, Department of
Economics and JFK School of Government, Harvard. back to text
4.- ‘Eurobarometer’, October 2003; ‘Views
of a Changing World’, Pew Global Attitudes Project, June 2003. back to text
5.- 13 June 2003. back to text
6.- H. Milner and B. Judkins, ‘Partisanship
and Trade Policy: is there a left-right divide on trade policy?’,
Columbia University (2001). back to text
7.- R. Damania (2004), ‘Trade policy: what’s
welfare got to do with it?’, University of Adelaide and P. G.
Fredriksson, Southern Methodist University. back to text
8.- Delegated to the Minister of Economy,
Finances and Industry. back to text
9.- Direction des Relations Economiques
Extérieures. back to text
10.- Secrétariat Général du Comité
Interministériel pour les questions de coopération économique
européenne.
back to text
11.- Union of Chemical Industries. back to text
12.- A French major employers’ union. back to text
13.- Through participation in the Comité des
Organisations Professionnelles Agricoles de l’Union Européenne/Comité
Général de la Coopération Agricole de l’Union Européenne (COPA-GOCECA).
back to text
14.- The main French farmers’ union. back to text
15.- ‘Les concours publics de l’UE dans les
quinze Etats membres’ and ‘Les concours publics à l’agriculture
en 2003’, MAAPAR, 2004. back to text
16.- ‘Les concours publics à l’agriculture
française: bilan des aides 1990 à 1997’, Economie et statistique
N°329-330, 1999, INSEE. back to text
17.- Tangerman, ‘Overcoming Discrimination
against Agricultural Exporters’, Paris: Cordell Hull Institute, July
2004. back to text
18.- 40% of agro-food exports in 2001. back to text
19.- Union of Industrial and Employers’
Confederations of Europe. back to text
20.- Union of Textile Industries. back to text
21.- 21 May 2003. back to text
22.- 30 April 2003. back to text
23.- 21 Feb. 2003. back to text
24.- 9 July 2002. back to text
25.- ‘The Case for the Defence’, Economist,
9 Jan. 2003. back to text
26.- H. Gaymard, F. Loos et P. A. Wiltzer, Le
Figaro, 21 Dec. 2002. back to text
27.- ‘Cancún: agriculture et libéralisme’,
Le Figaro, 9 Sept. 2003. back to text
28.- 11 March 2003. back to text
29.- Berlin, 17 Jan. 2003. back to text
30.- Agrisalon.com, 17 Dec. 2002. back to text
31.- Agrisalon.com, 12 Feb. 2003. back to text
32.- 13 Aug. 2003. back to text
33.- 8 April 2003. back to text
34.- For the EU, ‘Girard’s formula’
favoured protectionist countries, since its results depend upon each
country’s initial bound tariffs levels. back to text
35.- J. M. Messier, former chair of Vivendi
Universal, was unanimously criticized for declaring the ‘death of the
French Cultural Exception’ in 2001. back to text
36.- European Parliament, 10 March 2003. back to text
37.- 25 Feb. 2003. back to text
38.- See www.agcs.free.fr. back to text
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* Senior Research Fellow, IFRI (Institut Français des Relations
Internationales). This study relies on the views of decision-makers, and
only public sources — speeches, press communiqués, articles, statements,
and reports from government, administration and civil society stakeholders
— are used to report the opinions and decisions of political authorities.
Speeches available on government websites are only referenced by dates.
The study is further based on selected interviews of public and private
decision-makers and on inside analysis provided by ‘players’.
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