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Chapter 3: Multi-level negotiations in practice The actual bargaining game at the Community level revolved around a limited number of issues: financial burden-sharing after enlargement, reservation value at the international level (DDR) talks, and the implementation of a European agricultural welfare state in the future. Fischler himself had argued that the reforms would help the EU to meet the challenge at the Doha Round, and would at the same time integrate the new member states into a system of agricultural support operating in the rest of the EU (Bache, George and Bulmer 2011, 377- 378). But why continue support at all, especially if one’s tax monies have to be shared with many new gold diggers—to use James Clapser and Jack Thurston’s term (2010, 3)—among the new member states? After all, if the Doha Round was really the main driver, then the best solution would have been something along the lines of a bond scheme, perhaps best elaborated 9 by Alan Swinbank and Stefan Tangermann (2004, 55-78) . However, nothing like that was ever discussed. This chapter attempts to illustrate how multi-level games structure different actors’ incentives in a way that even seemingly rational actors will end up agreeing to pareto- inferior policy. The issues: cost of the CAP and eastern enlargement When the Commission (2002) first made the reform proposal public, it sparked rejection and criticism among the chief executives of many member states, not because the proposal was too modest to eliminate economic distortion, special interest rents and farming practices that are damaging for the environment. Instead, either particularistic discontent—not enough money 9 The idea of replacing all direct payments with bonds that would give recipient farmers same annual income as they used to receive through the CAP is itself not a new idea. It has been out there at least since Tangermann (1991). 35