Brief history of the Bruges Group 1995-2003
The premises: the Groupe de Seillac
At the beginning of the 1990s, the first signs of the crisis affecting the Common Agricultural Policy finally found their expression in a plan for reform. Ray McSharry, the European Commissioner responsible for carrying out the reform, put forward a plan which was strongly criticised by professional organisations and which, after lengthy negotiations, amounted to a process which envisaged the alignment of European prices with world market prices and introduced compensation measures intended to protect the income of producers together with other so-called 'accompanying' measures.
In 1992 this project was adopted, and represented the first thoroughgoing reform of an agricultural policy conceived more than thirty years earlier. Its main points were the following:
- the lowering of guaranteed prices for cereals, beef and oilseeds
- the setting up of direct compensation payments
- obligatory set-aside of 15% of land in order to limit production
- accompanying measures: financial inducements for early retirement, payments for the reafforestation of agricultural land, and an agri-environment programme.
