Europe of agricultural nations

Created more than thirty years ago in reaction to the common agricultural policy (CAP), the Peasant Confederation has had difficulty integrating into a community space that it nevertheless claims to invest in. How can we explain this paradox and this tension between national and European space?

A highly integrated community policy, the CAP gives rise to inter-union struggles aimed at asserting different orientations from the dominant one, particularly in terms of productivity and allocation of subsidies. The political scientist Élise Roullaud, a specialist in the transformations of union representation practices and collective action under the effect of European integration, sheds light on the effects in a particularly didactic work, taken from her doctoral thesis. To do this, she takes as her object the Peasant Confederation (CP) – and the organisation of which it is a member in Brussels, the European Peasant Coordination (CPE). Paradoxically, this agricultural union, born in 1987, demanded a reorientation of a European policy (the CAP) is less engaged in Brussels than in France. That being said, the CP is enigmatic: how can we explain that an organization that claims to be invested in the community space focuses more on the national? The author demonstrates that the union is becoming Europeanized, but without conforming to overarching rules or necessarily acting at the European level. The question then becomes, throughout the book, of grasping the institutional and social mechanisms by which the CAP and its developments contribute to those of agricultural representation, its positions and strategies deployed.

In order to grasp it empirically, the author combines several methods and sources: observations, analysis of archives, professional press and union bulletins, interviews, administration of questionnaires. The period chosen runs from 1987 to 2007, marked by three reforms of the CAP (1992, 1999, 2003). The latter, through the specific public action instruments that it institutes to regulate markets and subsidize production (“agricultural action instruments”), constitutes a set of constraints and central resources for the profession. Consequently, each of its reforms is a challenge for the unions, entities that act as spokespersons for the groups they represent in dealings with national and European public authorities.

A paradoxical relationship with the European Union and its agricultural policy

How the CPa critical union of the CAPdoes he defend his claims? To this question, which is part of the current reflection on the Europeanization of political representation, European studies (European studies) invite us above all to consider the political opportunities existing in the space of the European Union, and mechanically incline us to invest in it. But the case discussed by Élise Roullaud serves as a disarming counter-example. Because “(…) although the CP be a member of a European organisation (the European Peasant Coordination (CPE)), suggesting that there is indeed a change in the scale of its action, and although the need for investment in community space is regularly reaffirmed, its intentions most often remain without follow-up” (p. 11). It is therefore up to sociology to deal with the social conditions of this paradoxical investment in European space. This by focusing on the practices of the actors, their social and professional trajectories, registers of actions and relations with institutions, in order to denaturalize investment in community space. The 4 chapters that constitute the demonstration show how the CAP permeates the forms and practices of union representation.

A (re)configuration of agricultural representation

Through a historical detour opening the demonstration, Élise Roullaud addresses and underlines the structuring and the weight of the institutional framework in the definition of legitimate forms and practices within the space of European agricultural representation. This framework emerged in 1958 with the establishment of the CAP and in its direct line of COPA (Committee of professional agricultural organizations), structured as a decal by the European Commission to federate the organizations and provide itself with a single contact. But the productivist orientation retained for the CAP gave rise, in 1986, to the creation of another organization, the CPEthen forced to comply with existing representativeness criteria (agricultural sectoral delimitation, diversity of sectors, union organization, geographical base). The examination of the representation practices of the CPE shows that it is torn: between the search for independence and financial dependence on Community institutions; by contributing to the learning of the rules of the European game, which is time-consuming and restricts debates, actions and representation work. This is how, contrary to the thesis of Ernst Haas and his disciples – for whom the European space socializes the actors who evolve there – Élise Roullaud shows that those she studies do not necessarily integrate the legitimate rules and practices of European representation and are, through their “missed socialization into the European game” (p. 54), out of adjustment in this “socially censitary space” (p. 59).

The second chapter reveals how the European level is relegated to the background of the work of agricultural representation, to the extent that “the process of Europeanization is not necessarily based on integration into the European game” (p. 94). This is because the investment in European space is revealed to be (de)limited by specific social and organizational conditions. Indeed, while in Brussels the organization of the CPE and the delegate mandate limits the possibilities of socialization in the European game, of projects and of common strategies, its representatives do not occupy a central place nationally in the CP. There, training courses cover the technical mechanisms of the CAPits impacts on national productions, but few consider the European Union as the primary political space for production and decision-making in the CAP. Therefore, the counter-proposals of the CP – brought to the CPE – the various reforms are focused on French issues, around which trade union action is concentrated, mainly conducted in France against domestic targets. This is explained, on the one hand, by the historicity of the national institutional framework that structures the relations between public authorities and representatives of the agricultural profession; on the other hand, by the reforms of the CAPwhich have made national public authorities not simple intermediaries, but decision-makers with increasing room for maneuver. “(A)griculture thus finds itself at the crossroads of closely intertwined national and community issues” (p. 82), and the perception of the targets to be aimed at varies. The CPfailing to have constituted agricultural policies as an issue of European policies, fails to make them a “European problem” with social legitimacy (p. 83). Consequently, the ambivalent relationship of the CP with regard to the CPE : although it recognizes its centrality, finances it and sends delegates there, it does not appropriate it as a relay for action, especially nationally.

Europe, the object of intra and inter-union tensions

It is at this level that Élise Roullaud deals, thirdly, with the central weight of the CAP in the economy of – conflicting – union relations. Positions and oppositions within the space of agricultural representation are structured around the CAP upon its entry into force and the introduction of differentiated aid, creating according to the CP “a social divide” (p. 97) between farmers (who benefit unequally) with antagonistic agricultural practices. This is to challenge its orientation – as well as the monopoly of representation of agricultural “unity” and the modes of action of the FNSEA (p. 99) – that is created CP around a programmatic “ CAP alternative” around a “doctrinal base” (p. 104) of demands which distinguish it from a union perspective (maintenance of farmers, income guarantees, control of production tools, capping of public aid). Each of the reforms of the CAP is then the subject of struggles for appropriation between competing organizations to position themselves in the space of representation. Each also provokes an internal conflict within the union – between supporters and non-supporters, for example, of negotiation with the public authorities – putting its homogeneity and strategic choices to the test. Central policy, the CAP is integrated into representation practices, internal debates and the division of union labor.

Finally, the last chapter focuses on understanding the extent to which the CP develops a specific repertoire of collective agricultural action in the face of CAPpolicy that influences the forms of mobilization. Because, on the one hand, the union acts mainly in reaction to an institutional logic that imposes its deadlines, its temporality (national, community or international) and conditions targets: mainly institutional, it also involves rival agricultural organizations. On the other hand, then, the registers of action used by the CP are related to its position in the space of agricultural representation, where the unions are interdependent and exchange “blows” (in Mr. Dobry’s sense). For example, due to the lack of sufficient members to organize mass events, compared to those of the FNSEAthere CP plays with staging and stunts – such as gatherings with cows and sheep in front of the Louvre or the National Archives. Élise Roullaud thus calls into question the presuppositions of Charles Tilly and his readers, for whom the mobilizations target only the State and government.

An original contribution at the crossroads of fields of study

We are grateful to Élise Roullaud for her unprecedented deepening of the understanding of at least two processes, supported by a solid methodology and varied empirical collections (archives of the CP and satellite organizations, internal and official documents, interviews, participation in meetings and congresses, administration of questionnaires, etc.), which will ensure that his work will be discussed in the future by specialists from different fields. Firstly, it concerns the construction of trade unionism and its repertoires of action, which the author shows how they function in relation to competing institutions and organizations. Secondly, it concerns the mechanism for constructing political representation in the face of European integration, a policy of which weighs in the delimitation of the group represented and the modalities of legitimate representation, without however being all-powerful.

Political scientists will note here that subsidies (which they can call “instruments of public action”) weigh on these processes. This avenue could serve as an entry key for a more systematized and general analysis, focused on the effects of public action instruments (national and community) on political representation and trade unionism, including at the European level.