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believed to have joined the French more in order to gain some breathing space than because he was [personally] opposed to the whole reform approach.” (Pirzio-Biroli, 2008, p. 107) Blair’s job was to convince Aznar to switch sides and support the CAP reforms. Blair, who “had supported the CAP reforms all along, agreed on one condition: the Commission had to drop the capping of support to large farms”. Capping the payments would not only have hurt large UK farms and landowners, but might also have caused further distribution of cap monies away from Britain. Even though this exception did not quite address the concerns of Fischler’s other supporters concerning the inequality of CAP direct payments (shown in figure 5), he agreed to this as part of his community-level coalition building. In any case, Blair did manage to convince Aznar (who considered his international standing more important his domestic farm lobby) to switch sides in the CAP reform debate. According to Swinnen (2011, 62), this left the opposing coalition severely weakened. Impact of the international trade negotiations The survey of decision makers by Arlindo Cunha and Alan Swinbank (2009) shows that “the GATT/WTO negotiations were a major motivating force behind the [past] reforms” (259). While international negotiations did not have the same intensity as in 1992 because the pressure to open up markets was less, it nevertheless played a significant role. Within the Commission and the pro-reform camp, there was a general recognition of the need for further price cuts and the extension of direct payments for all commodities which were still supported through higher prices. This was to improve the situation of the market and to facilitate trade negotiations at the Doha Round since, by 2003, “it became clear that the EU could not take part in a WTO agreement on the basis of the Agenda 2000 package” (Garzon 2006, 101-5). It also became clear that something had to be done about Direct Area and Headage payments. This may 41