During this online De Gasperi Seminar, Kalliopi Geronymaki will reflect upon the financial aid that the Fonds Européen d’Orientation et de Garantie Agricole (FEOGA) offered to ameliorate agricultural infrastructure in different farming regions of the European Community between the years 1964-1978. Previous historical research has focused on the Commission’s marathons for the negotiation of agricultural price ceilings, accepted unanimously by all the member states (FEOGA Guarantee Section). This presentation analyses which projects were approved by the European Commission as eligible to receive FEOGA Guidance installments in different farming areas of the European Communities. The analysis also examines to what extent the programmatic goals of this assistance changed first after the 1968 Mansholt reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and secondly after the first European enlargement in 1973.
The study of the CAP FEOGA Funds on structural amelioration revisits the history of European Integration. On the one hand, the presentation questions if and how the FEOGA Guidance funds influenced the commercial power of the agricultural regions and their ability to join the European Common Market in the long run. On the other, it investigates whether the funds integrated the division uplands/lowlands, especially upon the accession of the United Kingdom and its mountainous farming areas (e.g. Scotland). Did the passage towards regional development encompass the social re-integration of small-scale farming? The story of this financial integration, with the CAP as a lever of change, suggests a new understanding of the integrative dynamics in Europe.
Photo credit:
Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / Dülmen, Baumschule Reckmann -- 2014 -- 8081 -- Ausschnitt / CC BY-SA 4.0