The Role of the European Commission in the Environmentalization of the CAP: Political Entrepreneurship and Institutional Agendas

Abstract

Abstract In this chapter we examine the role of the European Commission in the formulation and negotiation of the agri-environmental Regulation. We begin by examining the various conceptualizations of the European Commission in EU governance, and highlight the recent burst of literature that depicts the Commission as a ‘policy entrepreneur’. In particular, we focus upon the modalities by which the Commission gains an important margin of autonomy and capacity to influence outcomes in the EU policy process, portrayals that lend support to the ‘compelling metaphor’ of multi-level governance. The Commission’s role and position in EU governance endow it with particular modalities as a policy entrepreneur, not least its power of policy initiative, its function as a marketplace for policy solutions, and its central position in seeking compromises between varying national interests and standpoints. In this chapter we illustrate how the agri-environmental Regulation offered tremendous scope for political opportunism by the European Commission. In particular, we demonstrate the strategic importance and perceived political value to the Commission’s DG Agri of the environmentalization of the CAP. We argue that environmentalization provided the DG Agri with the opportunity to protect the agricultural policy community and the Directorate’s central position within it, the potential to divest itself of certain financial and administrative responsibilities for agricultural policy, and the chance to commandeer a new policy domain in the face of competitive pressures from other DGs within the Commission.