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the Doha talks that had failed at the Cancun meeting. More importantly, the EU offered to put on the table all agricultural export subsidies, which, as can be seen from figure 8, contributed only a small proportion of the rents farmers were receiving by 2004. This offer, however, was to be reciprocal: the EU’s negotiation partners in the WTO had to promise the same, otherwise the EU would withdraw what it considered a revolutionary concession. But even with this offer, the closest the EU ever got to a deal in the international arena was in August 2004 when the Doha Round participants adopted a package of temporary agreements, including commitments such as the abolition of agricultural export subsidies. (Meunier and Nicolaïdis 2005, 261) However, considering that no meeting has to date succeeded in completing the Doha Round by making even the above-mentioned temporary agreements permanent, it might be argued the international level did not reverberate strongly enough through to the Community level and more importantly, it did not reverberate enough through the domestic politics of pivotal member states. Figure 8: The path of CAP expenditure in billions of euros and in % of EU GDP 70.00 € 0.70% 60.00 € 0.60% 50.00 € 0.50% 40.00 € 0.40% 30.00 € 0.30% 20.00 € 0.20% 10.00 € 0.10% 0.00 € 0.00% 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 Export subsidies Market subsidies Direct aids Decoupled payments Rural Development CAP expenditure of EU GDP Source: The Commission (2012, 9) 44