On the European Responsibility in the Agricultural Multilateral Trade Negotiations: Modelling the Impacts of the Common Agricultural Policy

摘要

The present round of multilateral trade negotiations is still stalled over agricultural trade. The EU is pressed by its trading partners to open its agricultural markets. Economic evaluations of trade liberalisation scenarios unanimously conclude that substantial market opening is required for a successful (welfare-improving) Doha Round. In this paper, we perform new evaluations to identify precisely the contributions of the CAP and to examine the robustness of these evaluations to the representation of this complex policy. Using standard approaches, our first simulations show that the EU has a major responsibility in delivering significant gains to developing countries. However, when we conduct the same experiments with a more relevant calibration and modelling of the CAP instruments, the potential gains and their distribution are significantly modified: world welfare gains decrease by 60 per cent and the contribution of the market access pillar decreases by 52 per cent (from 65 per cent to 13 per cent). For developing countries, the reduction of their welfare gains due to a CAP dismantling is even more significant (92.5 per cent).