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behalf (Garzon 2006, 112). While the French did try to lobby their own government and the 18 Commission, at least as much as was possible in view of the secrecy surrounding the Fischer Reform proposal before its publication in 2002, the French agricultural lobby obviously had no direct impact on the German government’s position on the CAP reform. These domestic developments in Germany allowed Künast to change Germany’s initially hostile stance on CAP reform. However, realizing her pivotal position in German domestic politics and its impact on the Community level game, she easily extracted a small, but important for Germany and the Green Party, change in the Fischler Reform proposal: the Greens wanted to implement the decoupled payments based not on the 'historical model' (what farms had received in the past) but instead on the 'regional model' (that is, paying farms in the same region the same payment, regardless of what they had received in the past). (Swinnen 2011, 62) This reflects the advantage of being pivotal in the QMV environment. Ironing out the final agreement After tough negotiations on the reform proposal, the Commission finally managed to broker agreement at the Council of Agricultural Ministers during an all-night session on 30 June 2003. It can be argued that the use of QMV forced domestic chief negotiators to compromise at the Community level. Firstly for fear of being isolated in the ‘no’ camp and, secondly, by making a decision impossible as long as a blocking minority refused to compromise. Isabelle Garzon (2006, 114) argues that this is what happened when France and Spain attempted to lead a 18 Swinnen (2011) points out that in order to overcome the resistance of orthodox DG AGRl administrators, the Fischler reforms were prepared in secret with only six top officials fully aware of its contents. Of course, other employees of the DG AGRI could not have been kept entirely in the dark since preparations for the reform required a lot of work, including much policy analysis. However, the few policy analysts within DG AGRl who were tasked with aiding the reform were working on a need‐to‐know basis (Swinnen 2011, 58). 48