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for my country or too much money from my country—or outright rejection of the drive towards economic efficiency that would threaten the rents of domestic special interests was voiced. Even generally pro-reform countries such as the United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany were initially hostile to the Commission’s reform proposal because it included extension of direct payments to the new member states. It is no coincidence that these countries were among the highest net contributors to the budget (see figure 7) and hence their executives were concerned that the extension of the direct payments to new members would turn direct payments (which were initially introduced to ‘compensate’ farmers for the 1992 MacSharry reform-related price cuts) into permanent institutionalized rents for farmers in other distant constituencies. In other words, this move did not help domestic coalition-building and the executive’s popularity in these countries in any way. If anything, it made building a coalition based on domestic interests more difficult for the ruling governments. Also, a diversion of CAP funds to the new member states would not earn them support from their own farmers. Even in countries such as Germany, where the most favoured party of the farmers’ lobby was not 10 actually part of the governing coalition , there was little enthusiasm for the Commission’s proposal. The introduction of a perpetually high-cost CAP could negatively impact the appeal of the then-chancellor Schörder’s SPD party to more centrist voters. 10 Farmers in Germany usually lobbied the Christian Democrats and their Bavarian arm, the Christian Social Union, not the governing coalition of Social Democrats and Greens. 36