www.geocities.com/nzecon/clip/2000305SSTEuropeSmellie.html

Sunday Star-Times, 5 Mar 2000
 

HERE, fellow New Zealanders, is what we are up against.

It is a bureaucratic term, a longish word which encapsulates the difficulty food-exporting countries like ours face in their quest for wealth.

The word is multi-functionality. It was given life in Brussels, the capital of Belgium and centre of the increasingly powerful supra national organisation known as the European Union (EU).

The EU is not yet a sovereign state, but it is coming close. Its political and bureaucratic arms, the European Parliament and Commission (EC), are likewise not a government. But the commission, in particular, is increasingly powerful and politically committed to the concept of European integration.

The logic is economic and historical. If the countries of Europe depend on one another and have to consult one another at every turn, perhaps they will stop fighting one another.

A major step, the impact of which has yet to be truly felt, is the launch of the EU's Europe-wide currency. Already, the Euro is quoted in newspaper advertisements, traded on international markets, and available for travellers' cheques and credit card transactions. Britain, Denmark and one or two others are not joining in yet but they will almost certainly either join or, in Britain's case, hitch to the American dollar instead.

Such is the inexorable logic of economic globalisation. As this happens, New Zealand and Australia will also face pressure to use US dollars, or maybe Japanese yen.

It is creeping up on us, but faster than many realise.

Says Marion Bywater, a Brussels-based New Zealander publishing the Euro-Impact newsletter on currency con version, "the [European] general public has not really taken on board that it does not have a national currency any more".

As if this were not enough, there is another sign of de facto EU statehood: serious discussions are under way for a 60,000-strong Ready Reaction Force to mount EU-led peace keeping operations outside the Nato structure.

With a Europe-wide government, currency and army, there will soon be very little to distinguish the European Union from a sovereign state.

While the recent sharp rise of right wing anti-EU, anti-migrant parties across Europe indicates not everyone agrees with this direction, the fact re mains there is also a gaggle of poorer central and eastern European countries desperate to join the 15 EU members.

And here is the problem for New Zealand.

Many of those countries, especially Poland with its large rural population and big dairy industry, will have to be eased into the EU.

While it will not be possible for the EU to pay Polish farmers as much as existing European farmers receive to stay on their land, such payments will certainly continue.

Under the logic of the last 15 years in New Zealand, such producers should be made to face the competitive world market for their product and stand or fall.

But that will not happen. Not only would the attendant social and dislocation be more dire than left-leaning Europe could bear, but it would send shockwaves through the rest of cosy rural Europe where multi-functionality rules.

The term means this: that farming in Europe is not about making a living, it is about governments staying elected. It is about paying dearly for social cohesion by deciding it is nice to have people living in the countryside.

It works only because Europe can afford to pay for this.

After years of pushing and shoving, Europe's infamous Common Agricultural Policy is moving away from subsidies which encouraged farmers to produce too much.

However, the change is snail's pace, support payments, remain substantial and the range of reasons invoked for farmer support remains bewilderingly wide.

Asked to explain the objective of farm support policy, the deputy director-general of the EC's agricultural director ate David Roberts said: "In part, it's a question of managing change. In another part, it's maintaining activity in rural areas and maintaining activity for other non-agricultural objectives."

Ah yes, farming for reasons not related to farming. Jolly good. Eurocrats are sick of being lectured by New Zealand on why this is wrong.

"There are environmental objectives," Roberts added, "such as keeping the country side recognisable, as it is, rather than reverting to scrub-land or something."

The idea of regenerating native forests is quite alien to a continent so heavily farmed and populated for so long. Maintaining the natural environment in Europe means maintaining the evidence of human intervention.

Other officials advance other justifications: cultural identity, asserting sovereignty in countries with long histories of war, reducing urban drift and its attendant costs both social and fiscal.

And so we end up with multi-functionality: the Eurocratic catch-word for covering many objectives with one policy.

It can even cover the cultural necessity of retaining particular kinds of cheese.

"Only the Italians can make a good Parmesan," said one open-minded German official who had tried other countries' efforts.

No wonder the EC is trying to limit the use of wine-making terms. Dry, Reserve, Sherry - all are words which the EC wants to ban from bottles of Antipodean plonk.

The temptation is to sneer, although that is not quite fair.

When in Europe, it's hard to ignore the dictates of culture and the different priorities which different history creates. Widespread proportional representation voting also makes this the land of compromise.

And farmers' ability to at tract support payments and sell goods duty-free in Europe for the first time presents a trade double whammy for countries like New Zealand.