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SFP are large agro-companies, not individuals. Berkeley Hill (2012, 262) reports that in the case of the 2008 payments to the UK, Tate and Lyle Europe received €828 million and Nestlé UK Ltd received €197 million. To put these numbers into perspective, the average SFP in the UK that year was €12 517. The costs come out of the EU budget, and payments can clearly be seen to be going to beneficiaries who often have higher incomes and greater wealth than the rest of society which finances them. Nevertheless, these payments have become a familiar part of the economic landscape of EU agriculture and an important source of income to farm operators. “While it would be hard to justify their use if they did not already exist (another example of path dependency) the reality is that is not possible to withdraw them completely” 19 (Hill 2012, 154). However, instead of viewing farm support as a burdensome legacy that should be gradually phased out, Fischler and his Commission went to great lengths to devise ways to save it. As Pirzio-Biroli (2008) puts it: Scrapping the CAP [was] not an option [....] The Fischler reform was aimed at helping the CAP and its farmers reconcile the needs of modernisation and restructuring with the acknowledgement of their community function, and there cognition of the positive externalities generated by agriculture, and rural activities and spaces [....]. Fischler acted in the conviction that the EU needed to keep a strong agricultural policy, but periodically update it in order to adapt it to new realities. (Pirzio-Biroli 2008, 124) While representing impressive progress compared to the past, the MTR reforms not only failed to open the EU’s markets further, they also imposed some new restrictions to external producers, restrictions that may spell serious trouble for the EU at the DDR. (Olper 2008, 97) The Commission, of course, has sought to argue the contrary. From the Commission’s 19 The idea that it is not possible to completely withdraw all agricultural support at short notice without dire consequences was not (and is still not) a credible argument against CAP reform. As previously mentioned, scholars such as Tangermann (1991) have proposed compensating farmers by issuing them with fixed income bonds. 51