1. Introduction

Agenda 2000 was published by the European Commission in July 1997. In March 1998 the Commission presented its detailed proposals for discussion over the next year, and the draft Rural Development Regulation appeared in March 1999¹. These were to come into force from January 2000, so by the time the seminar began, planning the processes and procedures for implementing them was well in hand. Past experience suggested that the planning process varies between Member States, and within acceding Central and Eastern European states (hereafter CEECs), albeit within certain known guidelines. In some cases, and especially in CEECs, the procedures and processes were new.

So to bring together some of the key actors involved in the formative stages of implementation, giving them the opportunity to compare approaches and learn from one another's experience, could be useful to all parties. This was the main reason for choosing as the topic of the 1999 seminar the principles and practice of implementing Agenda 2000.

A second reason followed from the 1998 seminar. This looked at rural development in Europe from an international perspective, with a view both to Eastern enlargement and to the forthcoming Millennium round of trade negotiations under the WTO. The 1999 seminar could complement that international perspective by looking at the local implications of Agenda 2000, both for present and for future Eastern members of the EU: how both Member and Acceding States were going about its implementation and what might be the consequences of going about it in different ways.

Accordingly, the objectives of the seminar were:

1. To assess the way in which the Commission's proposals in and associated with Agenda 2000, such as the new Objective 1 and 2 programmes, the parallel programmes for the Acceding States, the new Rural Development Regulation, and the new Community Initiative on Rural Development, the successor to LEADER I and II, LEADER +, are being interpreted in the different states preparing for their implementation.
2. To explore, given the diversity of rural Europe East and West, different ways of thinking in drawing up plans that could deal with the various issues to do with rural development in Europe.
3. To promote a process of mutual learning among participants which could be used to inform the later phase of planning and programming for Agenda 2000, and prepare for its successor, discussion of which is expected to begin around 2003.

Proceedings
The participants in the seminar represented the range of interests in Agenda 2000 and its implementation. Present were policy-makers and planners from eight Member States and six Acceding States, together with officials from the European Commission, administrators, members of non-government organisations, and academics from diverse parts of Europe.

The first day was devoted mainly to a presentation of the Commission's attitudes and procedures, followed by a general discussion of how these looked when approached from the East and from the West. In the light of this discussion, five issues were chosen as the focus for subsequent sessions:

1. Relations between agricultural policy and rural development policy
2. Problems of regional disparity and cohesion, and possible solutions
3. Appropriate levels of competence: European, national, regional and local
4. Partnerships, their role and how they can perform it
5. Viable strategies for CEECs

The seminar concluded with a round-table discussion of what had been learnt.

At the end of the century Europe may, without too much licence, be likened to a ménage à trois comprising present members of the European Union, prospective members and the Commission. Each brings their traditional principles and current priorities, fixed commitments and areas of negotiability. All have reservations about the past, are none too comfortable with the present, and have misgivings about the future. In the course of the seminar many aspects of this imbroglio found expression, one way or another, in what proved knowable and what was not, what could be resolved and what could not, and how the resulting tension and uncertainty were dealt with. For the participants these encounters in passing served the pursuit of the third objective as much as the direct exchanges did the pursuit of the first two.

This report
This report is written for non-participants and participants alike. It is not a transcript but a synthesis: it draws together the exchanges of all sessions in quest of coherence beyond the limited concerns of the individual topics. The aim is to bring out the logical flow of argument, which may not always be apparent in the thick of a spontaneously evolving debate nor emerge too clearly in retrospect.

The report seeks to provide both a distillation of diverse individual contributions and a convenient overview of a collective debate. In this way it hopes to give better access to the substance of what was discussed, both to those who were not present and to those who were. All would then be provided with a statement of the issues and a range of responses to these issues that gave food for thought, whether to recall or to consider for the first time, and to agree with or to dispute. Such reflection could then be brought to bear in subsequent reflection on the fortune or fate of Agenda 2000, the way it was implemented in the event and what happened in consequence of implementing it that way. It should not however be imagined that there was consensus among the participants on every or even any issue - nor that they would all be happy with what is written here².

1. This was approved at the Berlin summit meeting in May 1999 [Council Regulation 1257/1999 of May 17]. The enabling regulation [1750/1999 of July 23] provides rules on implementation and programme management.
2. The seminar was held under Chatham House rules which assure participants that their remarks and opinions are not attributed to them in any report. The reporting is the responsibility largely of the rapporteur, and of the Programme Director, and represents their distillation and understanding of the proceedings.