Farmsubsidy.org Newsletter 01: October 2007

Who gets what from the Common Agricultural Policy

Newsletter INSIDE THIS ISSUE Investigative Reporters and Editors: award winners

Issue 1 October 2007

PROFILE: farmsubsidy. org founding member, Pierre Boulanger

Data quality: the good, the bad and the ugly

No more export subsidies – and dairy farmers are happy!

Take action on world’s first Freedom of Information treaty

Farm subsidies hit the headlines across Europe

Welcome

About farmsubsidy.org

Welcome to the first issue of our quarterly newsletter, we hope you find it useful and informative. Presented here is the latest news from the network of journalists, researchers and activists working to bring greater transparency to Europe’s farm policies.You can contact the farmsubsidy.org team by email: team@farmsubsidy.org.

Subsidies paid to farmers and others under the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy amount to approximately €55 billion a year, more than 40% of European Union’s entire annual budget, or around €100 a year for each EU citizen.

Farmsubsidy.org is a project coordinated by EU Transparency, a non-profit organisation in the UK and Kaas and Mulvad, data analysts based in Denmark. The aim is to

Issue 1 October 2007

obtain detailed data relating to payments and recipients of farm subsidies in every EU member state and make this data available in a way that is useful to European citizens. The project has brought together journalists, analysts and campaigners in more than a dozen European countries.

The project has received funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Open Society Institute.

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Data quality: the good, the bad and the ugly Jack Thurston London and Nils Mulvad Århus Since the very first breakthrough in farm subsidy transparency in Denmark in 2004, giant steps have been made across Europe in getting access to detailed data on payments from the European Union’s €55 billion common agricultural policy.

In July this year, Poland became the 20th EU member state to begin to open its farm subsidy data to the public. But much remains to be done. While full transparency is a reality in a small number of countries, for most of the EU the picture is mixed. Some countries are continuing to hold out against disclosing the information to their citizens.

As a way of measuring transparency in different countries against a common set of objective criteria, farmsubsidy.org has developed a Transparency Scorecard. This allows individual countries’ performance to be measured and compared. The result is a league table which shows which countries are doing the best and in which there is still room for improvement. Sweden tops the league table, ahead of Denmark and Slovenia.

Inconsistency abounds As well as varying levels of transparency between countries, there is considerable variation within countries. Some Spanish autonomous regions such as Andalucía and Castilla-La Mancha have released data, others have not. The picture is similar in Italy, with transparency more prevalent in the north than the south. In Ireland, only the top 100 recipients have been disclosed because the Irish Department of Agriculture insists on writing individually to each recipient to ask for permission to make the payments public. This approach may score marks for courtesy but it is a clear breach of the Irish government’s obligations under the Århus Convention, which provides European citizens the right to access environmental information. In the EU’s budget, the whole of the CAP comes under the heading of “preservation and management of natural resources”. This makes it very hard to dispute that CAP

Issue 1 October 2007

payments, particularly those relating to land management or agricultural production, qualify as environmental information and that the public has a right to access this information.

Who gets what – and why?

Countries vary enormously on the amount of data provided about the recipients of farm subsidies. In most countries, the name is disclosed, although there are often differences in the spelling of the name from one year to another. Aggregation of data is impossible without a unique recipient identification number. Under the EU’s Integrated Administration and Control System, each recipient of CAP payments must be allocated a unique identification number. Yet most governments have not disclosed ID numbers or any other means of accurately identifying the same recipient across a number of different payment schemes or across several years. Some recipients are given different names from one year to another (e.g. John Smith in 2005 and J. Smith in 2006). This makes data matching almost impossible.

Separately, it is remarkable that several countries have released farm subsidy data without giving any information about why the money was paid. The UK’s Rural Payments Agency has not released any breakdown of what was paid under which scheme, leaving citizens guessing as to why in 2004/05 the Queen of England received £356 547 for her Sandringham Farm estate or why the food giant Nestlé received £5 374 988. This failure is one of the subjects of farmsubsidy.org’s appeal against the UK government’s very partial release of farm subsidy data, which has been with the Information Commissioner since 2005 and will soon be adjudicated.

Farmers in Manhattan?

The precise geographical location of recipients is of genuine importance to anyone who wants to understand how the CAP works and whether it is directing

public money according to public priorities.

Yet this information is rarely present in data released by EU governments. In some countries like Sweden and Denmark, full postal code information has been released, allowing the mapping of farm subsidy recipients. In other countries like the United Kingdom and Italy, only very imprecise information concerning the region of the recipient is released.

No location information whatsoever is released in Ireland. Ken Cook, President of the Environmental Working Group in the United States explains, “The ZIP code information we have obtained from the USDA has enabled us to map farm subsidy payments and draw powerful conclusions

‘Precise geographical information is of vital importance to understanding how the CAP works’ like the link between subsidy intensity and nitrate pollution in the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. We’ve also uncovered the surprisingly large number of federal farm subsidy dollars going to recipients resident in Manhattan, Washington D.C. and Beverley Hills: not areas well known for their farming activities.” Ariel Brunner, Agricultural Policy Officer at BirdLife International in Brussels explains why this geographical information is important to conservation, “We want to examine the relationship between subsidy intensity and farmland bird populations on a panEuropean basis. BirdLife International and its member organisations have excellent data on bird populations, but we need to match this with high quality data on farm subsidy payments. As things stand, the data on payments is very limited because governments have refused to release what we need.” Sarah Cohen was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her work on the ‘harvesting cash’ series of investigations for the Washington Post. She says “I can’t stress enough how important it was to ➔

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➔ know where the cheques were being sent and where the recipients’ farms were.

Although we only got county-level farm information, we could get the addresses that checks were mailed to. That meant we could identify people who did not live on farms but were collecting farm subsidies, including retirees in some of the highestincome neighborhoods of the country.

We could also estimate the amount of money sent to farms for drought relief that never suffered a serious drought and find “family” farms that spanned many states and counties, effectively becoming huge conglomerates that were still operated by family partnerships.”

Basic errors and data fortresses It is surprising how many errors there are in the data that has been released on how €55 billion a year is spent. Elementary errors in text abound – for instance that data released in Spain cannot produce the character ñ, and instead renders ’?’ .

In England, the Rural Payments Agency data list the farm of Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, as being in ‘Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire’. In reality, Duchy Home Farm is located in Gloucestershire. European governments have adopted every manner of data disclosure with an emphasis on making the data inaccessible and difficult to analyse.

In the worst cases, like the Netherlands, the government has actively discouraged anyone from downloading the data from its website. This has been done by building a very restrictive user interface and blocking specially designed robots that can extract data in large quantities. Many governments have released data in PDF files running to thousands of pages. While several governments seem to have deliberately set out to release difficult-to-use data, some governments have provided standard XLS or CSV files which are much more easily incorporated into data analysis software.

Only one country, Sweden, has taken the step of releasing an adapted version of the same raw data files that are transmitted by every EU member state to the European Commission for audit purposes. This very rare commitment to transparency explains why Sweden tops farmsubsidy.org’s transparency league table, well ahead of joint second-place Denmark and Slovenia.

Along with Sweden, the Scottish Executive

Issue 1 October 2007

A Google Map showing farm subsidy recipients in downtown Manhattan deserves special mention for releasing data very rapidly after payments are made.

Farmsubsidy.org has called for ‘one click disclosure’, but EU governments are still falling short of best practice.

Hope for the future?

The new EU financial regulation agreed in December 2006 requires ‘adequate ex-post disclosure’ of the recipients of all EU funds, with agricultural spending transparency to begin in the 2008 budget year. But it is far from certain whether the implementing rules will meet the standards required. DG Agriculture has been fighting a rear-guard action to water down the requirements for disclosure, for instance by not requiring that details of CAP schemes are disclosed. This would leave EU citizens in the dark as to why farm subsidies are paid. There is also a lack of clarity about requirements for geographical identification of recipients. Only continued pressure by society at large will ensure that EU institutions stick to the pledges they have made. To learn more about how to take action, go to farmsubsidy.org/action.

‘Sweden tops the league table, well ahead of joint second-place Denmark and Slovenia.’

Country Score% Sweden 81% Slovenia 64% Denmark 64% Slovakia 54% Netherlands 51% Estonia 51% Portugal 46% Belgium 43% 40% Czech Rep. UK 36% Latvia 34% Poland 27% Italy 25%

Spain 22% Hungary 19% Lithuania 14% France 5% Germany 5% Ireland 5% Finland 2% Austria 0% Cyprus 0% Greece 0% Luxembourg 0% Malta 0% Bulgaria 0% Romania 0%

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IRE Award winner

No more export subsidies – and dairy farmers are happy

Brigitte Alfter Brussels

Brigitte Alfter Brussels

I clearly remember the day, when I got the news, that IRE, the leading American association of watchdog journalists, had awarded Nils Mulvad, Jack Thurston and myself an IRE award for our work with Farmsubsidy.org. Previously that day I had received another letter by an authority rejecting my application for data in spite of existing transparency legislation. The rejection had been clear, the offer of compromise out of the question. I had felt very tired indeed that day – until I got the news from IRE. The IRE citation recognised farmsubsidy.org as “a truly important and groundbreaking effort that will pave the way for the opening of other European Union records to the benefit of journalists worldwide.” A perfect antidote to my tiredness that day!

We got the award in the special category of ‘freedom of information’, and earlier this summer Nils and I traveled to IREs annual conference in Phoenix, Arizona to receive the award. As well as receiving the award, attending the conference was a great opportunity to reconnect with long-standing American colleagues and to make new contacts.

IRE is a grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality of investigative reporting, founded in 1975.

The recognition and the encouraging words by the colleagues will keep us going. So “stay tuned” as one of them often says.

“We have recently raised the prices for our farmers. Seen from a dairy point of view everybody is happy,” says Astrid Gade Nielsen, corporate communication chief at Arla, the world’s 7th largest dairy company, which is cooperatively owned by Danish and Swedish dairy farmers.

The comment is in spite of the June decision by the EU Milk Management Committee to stop export subsidies for dairy products. Milk prices have been rocketing world wide, too high to maintain the argument for export subsidies. New Zealand, Australia and Latin American exporters have had difficulties to deliver, at the same time not least China’s dairy imports are growing. A small complaint comes from the Danish Dairy Board, which would have liked to see a more “gentle” approach by the European Commission: “There are still some markets, most of all Japan, where we are under pressure and need the subsidies,” said Hans Bender from the Dairy Board in June, when the decision was made.

However Arla now for the first time in years is acting on market conditions. The immediate hole in the budget of 300-400 million Danish Crowns (€40-53 million) for 2007 has been transferred into higher prices in the export countries, Gade Nielsen explains. “Arla’s prices now are on the level

‘a groundbreaking effort that will pave the way for the opening of other EU records to the benefit of journalists…’

Issue 1 October 2007

of world market prices, and the individual farmer receives a much higher price for his milk,” she says.

Recent figures obtained by farmsubsidy. org show that the sum of subsidies to Arla has dropped significantly. Whereas the subsidies in 2000 amounted to more than €150 million and topped in 2003 to over €180 million, in 2006 they had dropped to below €70 million.

In the long run Arla is calculating that export subsidies will disappear, and is adjusting the company accordingly.

Previous plans to expand exports to the Arab countries was torpedoed by the Danish cartoon crisis of spring 2006, when Arab countries boycotted Danish products.

However Arla has established new productions in China and Finland, “when the subsidies are gone, being here or there does not make a huge difference,” she says about being based in the EU or abroad.

The recently released figures on the countries where exported products go show that Nigeria is now topping the list.

Currently bulk products give a better price, Gade Nielsen explains, however Arla is trying to develop a market selling tinned milk powder to end users as part of its long term strategy.

Top destinations for Arla’s subsidised dairy exports: Rank Country

Top 2006

Top 2004

Top 2003

Nigeria

1

5

6

Saudi-Arabia

2

1

1

United Arab Emirates

3

2

5

The Dominican Republic

4

6

13

Oman

5

3

3

Bangladesh

6

9

11

Japan

7

8

7

Algeria

8

46

46

Taiwan

9

11

14

Lebanon

10

14

09

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Polish data released after two years of struggle Brigitte Alfter Brussels

‘The only farmer among the top 10 recipients is a former senator wanted for tax evasion’

PHOTO: CARRIE CHESNIK

The largest beneficiaries of farm subsidies in Poland are not farmers but corporations. The story of other EU-states, where data have been published, thus is repeated in this most recent move for transparency, which came during the Polish government crisis this summer.

The only farmer among the top 10 recipients is a former senator, Henryk Stokłosa, who currently is in hiding after an arrest warrant was issued by the Polish government for corruption and tax offences, according to Gazeta Wyborcza. The largest recipients were foreign farming companies.

Small farmers in Poland barely get a look-in compared to the big agribusinesses

Issue 1 October 2007

More than €3 million went to farms owned by Spearhead International Ltd from Britain, while Danish Poldanor in Przechlewo received €1.9 million.

Among the recipients is former minister of agriculture Andrzej Lepper of the EU-critical Self-Defence-Party (Samoobrona). He received €5 843 from EU taxpayers in 2006.

The Polish government had been preparing to open data as of 2009, as agreed by all EU member states.

However on the initiative of an MP of the far right League of Polish Families, an amendment was passed to publish the data in 2008, tells Andrzej Krajewski, journalist and farmsubsidy.org network member. During the summer’s government crisis the data were published on the internet of the Ministry of Agriculture in July. “In the moment of political void, the opinion of experts rules,” Krajewski laughs.

The move by the government agency comes after a long struggle by Krajewski, who first applied in August of 2005. Since then he allied with the Helsinki Human Rights Foundation’s strategic litigation program, requesting the data through court cases, that are still ongoing. The data released is deficient in many important details and so Krajewski’s case will continue to force Poland to meet the standards of the most transparent EU member states.

“We decided to go on, because we want to know, what has been given since the beginning,” says Maciej Bernatt, one of the legal advisors at the Foundation. If necessary the team will bring the question to the constitutional court to test whether the practice of secrecy is against the Polish constitution.

The data released is now available on the farmsubsidy.org database.

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FARMSUBSIDY.ORG PROFILE: Pierre Boulanger Jack Thurston London International trade economists rarely face the full glare of the media spotlight, but when the first details farm subsidy recipients in France were revealed, Pierre Boulanger was the man everyone wanted to speak to. The 25-year old is one of the founding members of the farmsubsidy.org network and has been researching the issues of farm subsidies in France for four years.

His first big transparency breakthrough came in the autumn of 2005 after an unlikely partnership between the think tank Groupe D’Economie Mondiale at Sciences Po in Paris (GEM), the Confédération Paysanne which represents France’s small farmers and the development NGO, Agir ici (now Oxfam France – Agir ici). “The failure of the CAP to benefit small farms and encourage sustainable farming methods allowed the collaboration with Confédération Paysanne. All three partners saw transparency is a

powerful way to highlight equity issues in the debate about the legitimacy of the way European agriculture policy works in France.” says Pierre. Pierre’s analysis showed that just as in the rest of Europe, in France it is mainly large-scale farmers who receive EU agricultural subsidies, “Although they represent only 1 per cent of French farmers, they receive more in subsidies than small-scale farmers, which account for 40 per cent”.

Several months earlier, Pierre had been the brains behind the estimation of the €180,000 in farm subsidies paid to the then Dutch Agriculture Minister Cees Veerman for farms he owns in France’s Dordogne region. Minister Veerman had not declared these farms and was very nearly forced to resign when the Evert Vermeer Stichting, a Dutch development NGO, revealed the potential conflict of interest.

A talented economist, Pierre is

completing his PhD in international economics. His relentless pursuit of farm subsidy data through the byzantine French legal system governing access to statistical data has brought the admiration of Professor Patrick Messerlin, who heads GEM: “An editorial in the newspaper La Tribune once said that the only information more closely guarded by the French government are the codes for France’s nuclear bomb. They were only half joking. Pierre has proven a very worthy adversary of those who would prefer to keep the public in the dark on these important issues”. Looking to the future, Pierre runs GEM’s policy programme on CAP efficiency, equity and transparency.

Highlights in the programme’s forthcoming research include distribution of decoupled subsidies; reorientation of direct payments towards sustainable rural development measures; European budgetary tradeoffs. As things stand, France accounts for 20 per cent of CAP spending, and France has always led the group of countries that defend the CAP status quo. In terms of an impact on the future of the CAP, there is possibly more riding on Pierre than any other member of the farmsubsidy.org network.

Take action now on world’s first FOI treaty Helen Darbishire Madrid The world’s first treaty to guarantee the right of access to information, currently being drafted by the Council of Europe, risks falling below prevailing European standards according to civil society groups from across Europe. The treaty, which will become the “European Convention on Access to Official Documents”, is being drafted by a Group of Specialists, chosen by 15 of the 47 governments that are members of the Council of Europe. The Group of Specialists is mandated to finish its work by the end of 2007, but has just one more drafting session scheduled for 9-12 October in Strasbourg. There are three main weaknesses:

Issue 1 October 2007

1 Failure to include all official documents held by legislative bodies and judicial authorities within the mandatory scope of the treaty; 2 Failure to include official documents held by natural and legal persons insofar as they perform public functions within the mandatory scope of the treaty;

Group of Specialists begins) to call for the Convention to contain acceptable minimum standards on the right of access to information. Here are some ideas for actions you can take: ■ Sign the civil society letter ■ Write to your government

■ Contact your representatives 3 Failure to specify certain basic categories in the Parliamentary Assembly of official documents, such as those conof the Council of Europe taining financial or procurement information, Helen Darbishire is Executive Director that must be published proactively. of Access Info Europe. For more details Urgent action is needed before 9 October on the treaty and what can be done to improve it, visit www.access-info.org. (when the final drafting session of the

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