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Chapter 2: Background of the Mid-Term Review Introduction This chapter tries to give an overview of the international political environment, the CAP’s legacy and various other exogenous inputs that are necessary to analyse the Mid-Term Review from with MLGT. 7 The 2003 Mid-Term Review of Agenda 2000, also known as the ‘Fischler Reforms’ covered in this chapter was in reality much more than a progress review. Together with some minor follow-up reforms in 2004, MTR gave the main features of the current system. This is so because the 2008 CAP Health Check succeeded in making only small adjustments to the system that had previously been established by the MTR (Hill 2012, 143). What is perhaps most striking about the Fischler Reforms is that despite the CAP’s obvious problems and broad re- alignment of some actors’ preferences at all three levels, the MTR (like its predecessors) kept the CAP within the state-assisted paradigm and the sector’s rents remained secure and isolated from the world market. Or, as Fischler himself put it during an internal seminar in April 2001: “For us, the relevant policy question is not if, but how to continue support for EU agriculture” (Fischler 2001, 4). This, however, only reveals the intention of one important actor. It does not answer the question what set the MTR in motion, and what started the negotiations. After all, there was little to no pressure from the agricultural markets for immediate reform. As can be seen in table 1 below (for most commodities), the balance was going to be reached in medium term. By 2002, successive reductions of institutional prices since the MacSharry 7 Named so after Dr. Franz Fischler, who was the Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development and Fisheries between 1995–2004. 29