eForesee Istanbul Conference

Towards a European Model of Agriculture in the EU25+

Activities initiated by the e-Foresee project

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Meetings held in Nicosia on 25 October 2002 and Ioannina on 16 May 2003 have brought together experts from current and future members states to discuss what needs to be done to rethink approaches to policy making on agriculture related issues over the next few years. A meeting held in Riga on 30 June 2003 brought together a new group of experts to discuss, substantiate and build upon the results of Cyprus and Ioannina. This has prepared the ground for a series of parallel working sessions to be held in Istanbul on 3 October 2003 in a meeting organised with TUBITAK - the Turkish Council for Science and Technology. This meeting will be attended by high-level experts and policy makers from the EU25+ and is intended to continue the work of examining the scope of important policy issues and dimensioning them in terms of the parameters for policy options at national, regional and European levels.

The Broader Context

The series of e-Foresee meetings - Nicosia, Ioannina, Riga and Istanbul takes place against the broader context of the Cork Declaration of 1996, a theme to be revisited by a meeting in Ireland in 2004 perhaps during the Irish Presidency, with a focus on the future of rural Europe. The process can be pictured as follows:

• The Cork meeting was attended by Mr. Fischler - EU Commissioner for Agriculture, Fisheries and Rural Development, and lead to the adoption of 'The Cork Declaration' during the Irish Presidency in 1996. This was the first major statement at European level advocating improved coherence and coordination between policy in agriculture, the rural environment and rural development.
• The first e-Foresee Conference on Foresight was held in Nicosia on 25 October 2002: 'Exploring Agricultural Policy Futures for Small Accession Economies in an Enlarged EU - Part I'. This meeting was inaugurated by George Vassiliou a former President and current Chief Negotiator for the Accession of Cyprus to the EU. It highlighted important challenges to be faced by new member states as a result of the accession process. In particular it drew attention to the fact that few if any new member states have had time to develop policies addressing change management related to the restructuring of rural or agriculture based economies, the development of appropriate knowledge infrastructure on which to base modern competitive 'knowledge based' agricultural practise. It explored the role that tools such as 'foresight' could play in the development of policies that enjoy the support of stakeholders, opinion leaders and change agents at local level. It highlighted the recent success of Cyprus in piloting foresight processes involving the four main farmers unions in the country.
• An international conference entitled 'Foresight in the Enlarged European Research Area' was held in Ioannina, Greece on 15-16 May 2003, under the Greek Presidency of the European Council. The event was attended by Achileas Mitsos - EC Director General for Research, and included a session that brought together experts from different countries to explore in more detail the reasons for a broader approach to agriculture related policy development, and the implication of this for RTD and Innovation related activity. The highlight of this meeting was a presentation by Liam Downey - former head of Teagasc - Irelands Agriculture and Food Advisory Board. He presented preliminary results from an ongoing 'foresight' exercise in Ireland that explores the consequences of current market driven agricultural policy in terms of its impact on employment in rural communities, industrial concentration in the agricultural sector as well as its impact on the physical landscape as an important natural and tourism resource. Although these finds are preliminary, they already provide an Irish perspective on the European model for agriculture. In particular it indicates how RTD & Innovation policy might evolve to support the development of agriculture and sustainable rural areas.
• A high level workshop took place in Riga on 30 June 2003 entitled 'New Approaches to Agricultural Policy Development in the EU25+'. The goal of this meeting was to build upon the lessons learned in the past in the EU and the ideas put forward in Nicosia and Ioannina, to extend the discussion to a wider range of experts and to focus it on more specific topics. The discussion considered in more detail the role that 'policy foresight' could play in supporting new approaches to policy development relating to the following issues:
  • Multi-functionality, the WTO and CAP reform
  • Agriculture and sustainable rural areas in a science-based knowledge economy
  • Innovation Systems and the diversification of rural economies
  • Capacity building and trajectories for sustainable rural areas
  • Accession related change management for rural or farming communities
• The final meeting with support of the 'e-Foresee' project will take place in Istanbul on 3 October 2003. In this meeting we abandon the 'classroom' format and focus the work in a series of 3 parallel working sessions with moderators. The three parallel sessions deal with:
  • Abandonment - causes, consequences, challenges and policy options,
  • Biotechnology - potential contribution to the European Model of Agriculture,
  • Multi-functionality - meaning and consequences for payment schemes.

The meeting is intended as a working meeting and so the groups are small to encourage more vigorous debate. All participants are required to provide position papers and points for debate on a set of leading questions that will be provided before hand. These questions are based in part on a set of nearly 90 questions that have been derived from the proceedings of the conference in Riga. The philosophy of the 'foresight threads' is not to go over old ground but to move ahead with new experts each time refining our concept of the issues being addresses and expanding our concept of the policy options that may be worth considering and adapting to the needs of each region.

• An event will take place in Ireland in 2004 that will consider how policy makers in RTD and Innovation and in particular how the development of a European research Area can support progress towards a New Model for European Agriculture in the EU25+. This meeting will bring together threads of discussions originating in Cork in 1996, picked up again in Nicosia, and developed further in Ioannina, Riga and Istanbul. It will revisit the Cork Declaration to renew its vision by taking account of the EU25+ and the possibility of harnessing new instruments in a coherent way after 2006. It is hoped that this event will also correspond to the launch of an FP6 initiative to support the introduction and adoption of new participative policy development processes for agriculture related domains across Europe and its regions.