7. Conclusions: what has been learnt?

Down on the ground where the battles rage, they are fought at close quarters; what the pronouncements of the EU say and what they may be taken to mean are contested line by line. Over time the tide of fortune has ebbed and flowed. At first agriculture commanded the field without challenge; then rural development arose to present an alternative vision; agriculture responded to its challenge with the claim that development of agriculture amounts to rural development.

From a suitable height, the debate over the implementation of Agenda 2000 may be seen as a not untypical skirmish - though perhaps larger and more wide-ranging than most. The champions of rural development have not prevailed with the Commission, nor against lobbyists for sectoral interests. At Cork in 1996 it was established - so they thought - that a region did not have to be disadvantaged in order to benefit from a rural development policy. Years of refining concepts and designing integrated rural development schemes, with expectations of implementation raised at Cork, suffered a reverse if not defeat in Agenda 2000 with its continued focus on disadvantage and resurgence of horizontality. Focusing on disadvantage promotes competition for funds: my region, my disadvantage is more deserving than yours. Horizontality provides a way, suitably disguised, of defending the sectoral approach, and of outflanking if not actually heading off the challenge of territorial approaches. Similarly, stretching the notions of farming and farmers into the concept of 'a multi-functional agriculture' provides a way of justifying using them as the principal channel of redistributive funding and so preserving their status as the dominant actors in rural areas, regardless of their actual contribution to the economic, social and environmental well-being of rural areas.

That such stretching is not just possible but practised indicates that the dynamics of the relationship between agriculture and rural development in rural Europe at the end of the twentieth century are still not sufficiently appreciated, and perhaps in consequence the commitment to rural development outside agriculture is not sufficiently firm.

Lack of commitment is expressed in unequal representation at different levels of government; agriculture is represented at all levels, rural development is not. This cannot but undermine efforts to design and implement integrated rural development policies, leading to disjunctions between what goes on at policy level and what is happening on the ground. Old administrative traditions can still exert their influence. Ministries of Agriculture will continue to nourish their negative image of rural development, and other ministries will wake up only when agriculture ministers start dealing with non-agricultural aspects of rural development.

When compared to the vision expressed in the Cork Declaration on A Living Countryside, what is called rural development in Agenda 2000 seems better described as agricultural policy paying lip service to rural development. Earlier rural development programmes implemented under Objective 5(b) and LEADER had some success, within their limits; those limits have been set tighter in Agenda 2000. To the extent that Member States allow themselves to be deceived by this, and indeed in too many cases to connive in it, Acceding States should be wary of looking to them as models to follow and for transferable examples of best practice. Examining the various policy structures and noting the different experiences of different Member States is instructive, not least because it shows that problems of unclear and wavering commitment to rural development are to be found everywhere, East and West (not just in Spain). Accordingly, it makes plain the importance of clear national strategies in determining long-term benefit. But Acceding States should feel free to pursue their own ideas and opportunities, devise their own measures and set their own standards of performance, without feeling any need to defer, justify or apologise for themselves.

For their part, Member States can learn from Acceding States. To see the same policy dilemmas approached differently sheds instructive light not only on the dilemmas but also on the way Member States habituated themselves to conceive them. Thus may learning be truly mutual. Hearing one's problems and plans to deal with them described through others' eyes distances you from them. From that distance it is easier to see them afresh through your own eyes. Things may then be conceived anew, and what can and what cannot be changed re- assessed with spirits recharged. Member States do not have to deal with a legacy of four decades of authoritarian neglect before 1989 followed by another of upheaval and uncertainty after it. But in consequence they have not the occasion or the need for radical re-thinking and disinterring of entrenched attitudes. This should be born in mind when Acceding States express surprise that the rural development lobby is so weak in Member States and in the EU generally. Acceding States may well be more advanced in some respects and hence feel misgivings when Member States appear to sit in judgement on them and declare "that is not a proper rural development strategy".

This cuts both ways. Member States should not presume to judge, as if there were some template or standard against which to compare strategies, and they alone know what it is; Acceding States should not be too quick to feel judged, to assume that criticism implies judgement, pointing to differences implies attributing inferiority, and remarking on inexperience implies inability to learn. Among themselves, Acceding States do not have the same problems because like Member States they too have different traditions. But that makes them all alike in all being different, and so gives them a common concern with diversity. Hence there is need for reciprocity rather than hierarchy, and scope for blocs and alliances among equals. The Commission may well find these convenient because they could reduce the number of individual negotiations and negotiators, and lessen the likelihood of appearing to allow individual exceptions and special deals that might later be cited as precedents.

But as well as joining with one another CEECs can find common cause with Member States. All can go into battle with the Commission not in competitive isolation because suspicious of one another's undeclared intentions and not in disjointed disarray because ignorant of one another's problems and plans for dealing with them. They can then be confident about their diversity rather than disquieted by it. After all, if rural Europe is indeed diverse, the onus of proof lies with those who propose a single standard strategy for all regions and seasons. It is not inconsistent with that to unite in calling for integrated territorial rural development policies that recognise diversity in all quarters - in the East as well as the West - as distinct from horizontal sectoral approaches which recognise it reluctantly as a late-made concession. Rather, it should be an axiomatic first principle at the centre of concern and respected from the start.

Acknowledging that Agenda 2000 marks a retreat after the advance of Cork, and that its provisions are limited in imagination as well as resources need not amount to acceptance of defeat. The next raft of negotiations approaches, be they to reform the Structural Funds, the regulation on rural development, and the CAP in all its glory, or the Millennium round of big- league trade talks under the WTO. Once the threshold, as much psychological as anything else, of enlargement and accession has been crossed, there will be more time and energy to devote to working out domestic relations. The detailed rules and case-by-case determination of what is permissible and what is not, what counts as good practice and what does not, remain to fight for. This time though all will be insiders - though of different standing - and all will be veterans - though with different experiences - courtesy of having had to implement Agenda 2000.