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simplified and streamlined. In order to avoid the situation where farmers would have to bear the expenses of greening themselves, it is proposed that the farmers’ organizations would be given more formal powers so that they would be in a stronger bargaining position in relation to ‘middle men’ of the food industry (The Commission 2011, 41). While farmers’ organizations—with the help of militant labour-union like tactics—could be able to extract more for their products from the middle men, it is necessary to emphasize that middle-men might also be able to pass on the costs. The end result would be that EU consumers would be paying again much higher food prices like they did back in the pre-MacSharry reform era in 1980s. The difference is that instead of paying for the maintenance of family farm, they would 20 be now paying for foodstuff with dubious ‘green’ credentials while foreign producers would be again prevented from entering the EU market because their food does not meet the EU’s ‘green’ food production practices criteria. Needless to say, if this scenario becomes reality, it is likely to cause a destabilizing back-clash at the international level, particularly in the Doha Development Round. The international level, however, would not be the only arena where this scenario could encounter strong resistance. Since the integration scenario also includes “better targeting of payments to achieve a more effective balance of both economic and environmental concerns within Pillar I” (The Commission 2011, 42-3), it is likely to stumble upon the same community level negotiation difficulties expected to be encountered under the adjustment scenario. For example, capping of payments when the overall CAP budget is maintained, will be objected to by the United Kingdom and Germany (possibly also Slovakia and the Czech Republic), who                                                         20  Across  the  board  ‘greening’  attempts  can  be  considered  dubious  because,  as  Tangermann  (2012,  324)  emphasizes, it is at all clear whether (1) conditions attached to the green direct payments would really make a  significant contribution the environmental situation and fighting climate change and whether (2) payments have  to be made in order to ensure that farmers comply with such conditions. Indeed, it can be argued that socially  harmful farming practices should be taxed on the principal that ‘polluter pays’ instead of subsidied on the  principal ‘society bribes the polluter into not polluting’.  58   
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