Mediterranean Farmers and Alternative Europes: Resistance,Europeanisation and CAP Reforms in Italy and France (mid-1970s to mid-1980s)

In a recent article, Kiran K. Patel challenges the widely held belief in a ‘permissive consensus’ among European citizens regarding the institutions of the European Economic Community (EEC). ¹ The narrative he contests describes the ‘permissive consensus’ as having eroded after the Maastricht Treaty, when the European Union became a controversial topic that inspired strong feelings of approval or rejection. ² Patel asserts that this thesis is primarily based on surveys such as the Eurobarometer, which failed to capture citizens’ opinions of EEC institutions and were instead used by European institutions and governments as a tool of legitimation. In his view, the surveys were part of a broader attempt to depoliticise and demobilise resistance to integration, allowing the development of the initially fragile Brussels institutions to be shielded from potentially virulent public controversies, at least for a few decades. While depoliticisation probably enabled the institutions to survive and develop, it also facilitated the emergence of a problematic historical narrative of success and unchallenged widening and deepening. As Patel argues, the consolidation of a history of success might be among the reasons why catastrophic narratives concerning present-day EU are so common. In other words, the idea of a conflict-free and successful past transforms the present into a constant state of frustration, in which every crisis, small or large, is interpreted as the possible dramatic last blow that could push the Brussels institutions into the abyss.

This article rests on Patel's premise that depoliticisation and demobilisation, particularly in the early post-1957 decades, played a significant role among the wider public. It aims to illustrate, moreover, how European issues became intensely politicised when stakeholders, including very large groups such as farmers, were involved. Rather than adopting the perspective of European institutions, the article looks at the impact of integration on specific social actors, in this case, farmers’ associations. In doing so, it helps deconstruct the problematic European Union success story and offers an innovative narrative that avoids idealising Brussels institutions as carriers of a salvific mission – an expectation that human institutions invariably shatter. Instead, it embraces European integration as a complex process, marked by continual clashes and compromises between several ever-evolving ideas and visions of Europe. This historical process of European integration predates the Treaty of Rome and weaves an intricate pattern through its past, present, and undoubtedly, its future.

The article specifically examines the change in the way Coldiretti (Confederazione Coltivatori Diretti), the largest Italian farmers’ organisation, pursued its European interests from the early 1980s, well before the Maastricht Treaty. From its inception, Coldiretti had strong relationships with the Democrazia Cristiana (DC), the Christian democratic party that participated in the Italian government from the founding of the Italian Republic until the 1990s. The premise of this article is that Coldiretti's direct connection with a major political party, a key player in the early years of European construction, allowed it to delegate its representation within European institutions to the DC. ³ This arrangement also resulted in a partial demobilisation, to use Patel's term. ⁴ In other words, Coldiretti was confident that the DC represented its interests and that there was, therefore, no need for special channels to exert direct influence on the European institutions. However, in the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, a crisis in its relationship with the DC pushed Coldiretti to look for new forms of political action in the European arena, which led it to an unintended deeper Europeanisation in order to address more boldly a series of issued deemed central in the agricultural policy of the EEC. ⁵

As it grew more distant from the Christian Democrats, Coldiretti, in an effort to gain more influence in Europe, became more interested in collaborating with similar organisations in other European countries. Even in circumstances in which its interests appeared to be rather discordant with those of other national organisations, such as for instance with the French during the so-called wine war, Coldiretti looked to the practices adopted by French farmers with great interest. Although Coldiretti's intention was to defend the ‘national’ interests of Italian farmers, sometimes also against those of other European agriculturalists, the methods it began to employ were closely tied to those of its European colleagues. With the explicit intention of overcoming the depoliticisation of European and national issues that its ties to the Christian Democrats had brought about, the organisation pursued a deep and partly unintended process of Europeanisation.

This also led Coldiretti to try to influence potential future developments within the Community, such as the EEC's southern enlargement in the first half of the 1980s. Several influential members of Coldiretti expressed doubts on the proposed modalities of Spain and Portugal's accession. Different visions of Europe emerged in the discussion on the enlargement, including geographies of Europeanisation that went beyond the national level and encompassed European solidarities rather at the regional scale. For instance, while French farmers were perceived from the ‘national’ point of view as adversaries during the ‘wine war’, they could also be viewed as possible allies in the imagined contrast between so-called continental and Mediterranean agriculture in Europe. The terms continental and Mediterranean, pivotal in this debate, were used to convey the difference between, on the one hand, ‘continental’ agricultural products, such as cereals and dairy, prevalent in central and northern Europe and, on the other hand, Mediterranean products, such as for instance wine, fruit and olive oil, typical of the regions bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Especially in debates where the issue of the southern enlargement was intertwined with the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), key members of Coldiretti suggested that there was not only a contrast between the northern and southern EEC, but also between North and South at the regional level, and that a clearly definable ‘national’ interest was hard to identify.

In addition to this introduction and a short conclusion, the article is divided into three sections. The first starts with Coldiretti's general assembly in 1980, which brought about some fundamental changes in the organisation. It presents some of the key features of Coldiretti, embedding the organisation in the Italian and European political contexts and shedding light on some of the processes that led to the changes in 1980. The second section briefly introduces the ‘wine war’ and examines its resonance within the organisation, as well as the forms of Europeanisation that emerged from it. In the third section, the article analyses the discussion regarding the enlargement to the south and the consolidation of a debate on the possible contrast between north and south, both within the community and within nation-states.

Connecting these briefly outlined points, the primary contribution of this article could ultimately appear rather counterintuitive. The analysis reveals that alternative forms of Europeanisation came to the forefront precisely in the emergence and structuring of new critiques of European integration. These alternative Europeanisations, in turn, engaged in a complex dialectic with other Europeanisation processes, influencing their course.

1. Farmers and the European Christian Democrats: The Case of Coldiretti and the DC

In the fall of 1980, Coldiretti's 25th General Assembly took place in Rome. The meeting, held between October 14 and 16, was in many respects a historic event. One of the most important tasks of the congress was to ratify the succession of a new leader. Paolo Bonomi, who had been the undisputed head of an organisation repeatedly accused of centralism, stepped down, handing over his creation to Arcangelo Lobianco. ⁶ Bonomi had not only founded and led Coldiretti for 36 years but had also been recognised as one of the most powerful and influential personalities of the Italian Republic. The assembly was the final step in a long process of change in both the organisation's relationship with its historical ally, the Christian Democrats (DC), and its position concerning the CAP and the EEC in general. In early 1981, few months after the assembly, Coldiretti organised a vertenza europea, a European dispute. This was meant, through new forms of protest, to make Coldiretti's voice weigh more in the heated negotiations concerning the adjustment of CAP prices.

Since its founding in 1944, Coldiretti had quickly established itself as the largest and most powerful of the organisations representing the variegated realm of Italian agriculture. While Confagricoltura, which was reconstituted in 1948 from the ashes of the Fascist Confederation of Farmers, mainly represented the interests of large landowners, Coldiretti gave voice to the sizeable group of small landholders and small and medium farming enterprises. In this field, Coldiretti openly competed with various organisations of the socialist and communist left, which had their strongholds in some regions, but did not come close to matching Coldiretti's membership numbers on the national level. ⁷ In a brief note to the French Ambassador in Rome, the agricultural attaché summarised that the situation of the Italian farmers’ associations in 1981 was characterised by three main forces: the two ‘agricultural organizations close to the Government (Coldiretti, Confagricoltura)’ and the ‘leftist organizations (Confagricoltori, Anca)’. ⁸

The rise of Coldiretti runs partly in parallel to the growth in smallholders, who had multiplied in number following the land reform enacted in 1950 by Alcide De Gasperi's government, which included major expropriations and the distribution of land to labourers. This reform, financed through the Marshall Plan, was in part intended to control communist successes that were challenging the political hegemony of the Catholics in rural areas. ⁹ Both the DC and Coldiretti rightly saw this new group of owners as a potential pool of consensus. Strengthened by the support of successive Christian Democrat governments and the control they granted it of key public institutions in the primary sector, Coldiretti became one of the largest mass organisations in the Republic. For in a country in which a large part of the population was engaged in the primary sector in the immediate post-war period, Coldiretti represented the category of farmers who, thanks to the agrarian reform, had become the most numerous.

The connection between the Christian Democrats and rural populations was not unique to Italy but also present in other Western European countries. According to Ann-Christina Knudsen's work on the early stages of the CAP, ¹⁰ the embedding of the primary sector in the Treaty of Rome and its implementation from 1962 onwards resulted both from a long tradition of rural exceptionalism, dating back to the inter-war period, ¹¹ and from an attempt to form a consensus among the rural population, which Western European conservatives perceived as economic and moral backbone of their nations as well as a potential electoral base. The CAP was based on a complex system of price guarantees for specific products and tariffs on goods from non-EEC countries. Although the outcome was rather different, the CAP was initially meant to close the growing income gap between industrial and rural workers and especially to protect small family businesses, in the process fostering smallholders’ connection to conservative parties. ¹²

While the connection between rural populations and conservative parties was an EEC-wide phenomenon, ¹³ the Italian case had its peculiarities. In the immediate post-war decades, for example, the percentage of Italians employed in the primary sector was uniquely high compared to other EEC members. Therefore, the ability of the biggest Italian farmers’ organisation to ‘control’ several millions of votes was certainly unusual in the Western European context. Furthermore, despite regular minor disagreements between the DC and Coldiretti, the latter always remained strictly loyal to the party and could be considered almost as its agricultural branch. To describe the relationship between Coldiretti and DC, commentators of the time often used the expression ‘collateralism’, which defined the closeness and in some cases the dependence of civil society associations on certain political parties. ¹⁴ It also underlined that associations such as Coldiretti did not have an agenda completely independent from that of the party.

Further, on the national level, and in line with Patel's hypothesis, the very existence of Coldiretti guaranteed a consensus for the government and demobilised potential radical movements among the rural population. Although Bonomi regularly reminded the Christian Democrats how crucial Coldiretti was for maintaining electoral consensus, the organisation's loyalty to the DC was guaranteed under his leadership. To strengthen its alliance with the Coltivatori diretti, the DC granted them a series of privileges that included virtual control of the Ministry of Agriculture and the election of a large group of its members to the Italian Parliament, as well as the European Parliament from 1979. In this context, it is noteworthy that, despite the consistent involvement of the Italian Minister of Agriculture, who was frequently affiliated with Coldiretti, primary decisions concerning the CAP were generally made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Coldiretti, while present at the negotiating table, played a more significant role in ensuring the loyalty of the rural population than in actively lobbying for their interests. This dynamic is arguably one of the main reasons why, in the Italian case, agriculture was frequently a bargaining ground upon which various foreign policy interests were negotiated. ¹⁵

A real cooling of relations between Coldiretti and the DC occurred only in the second half of the 1970s. ¹⁶ The decisive rupture occurred in the formation of Aldo Moro's fourth government in 1974. To Coldiretti's dismay, it was not its candidate who became Minister of Agriculture but rather Giovanni Marcora, an exponent of the Christian Democrat left, that is, the wing of the party furthest removed from the conservative Coldiretti. Instead, Coldiretti's candidate, Arcangelo Lobianco, was offered only an undersecretary position in Marcora's ministry. Despite repeated changes of Prime Minister, Marcora remained in office from 1974 right up until a few days after the end of Coldiretti's general assembly, which came just a few days after the crisis of the second government of the Christian Democrat Francesco Cossiga, who was replaced in his position as Prime Minister by his party colleague Arnaldo Forlani. ¹⁷

The reasons that led to this rupture lie in the complex economic and social events that characterised Italy and Europe in the 1970s. On the national level, the governments of the Christian Democrats and their allies made a series of concessions to trade unions from the beginning of the decade. In fact, as early as 1968, new forms of unitary syndicalism succeeded in asserting the centrality of the labour movement and in forcing some historic reforms. In this context, Coldiretti saw the new importance gained by industrial workers, and employees in general, as damaging to the position of agricultural workers and entrepreneurs. ¹⁸ Furthermore, the numbers of people employed in agriculture had declined from 40% in 1950 to 31% in 1960, 18% in 1970, and 13% in 1980, while those employed in the primary sector continued to have lower average incomes than in other sectors. ¹⁹ To Coldiretti, it appeared that its longstanding ally, the DC, had overlooked the fact that farmers were its most steadfast electoral base – more so than industrial workers.

The first fundamental steps in the division between the Coltivatori diretti and the Christian Democrats, which would later lead to Arcangelo Lobianco's election in 1980, were foreshadowed at a conference held in 1975 in Montecatini. During this meeting, the organisation decided to set aside the centralist model represented by Paolo Bonomi. Regional delegations submitted critical reports suggesting long-term strategies for the organisation. In particular, some of the reports from the northern regions advocated for greater independence from the DC. Some delegates proposed that in order to pursue the interests of its members, Coldiretti should also consider making agreements with political movements and organisations other than the DC and the Catholic union trades. The widespread backing for these ideas eroded Bonomi's leadership. As the personal embodiment of a close connection with the DC, he found himself in a somewhat marginalised position within the organisation, a situation exacerbated by his ailing health. ²⁰

Lobianco, who emerged as a mediating figure between the different positions regarding the relationship with the DC, had already begun taking control of the organisation at least three years before the 1980 Assembly, increasingly replacing Bonomi on key occasions. One of these was a large national rally organised by Coldiretti on 16 April 1980 in Rome's Piazza San Giovanni, a location typically reserved for gatherings of the labour movement. During the demonstration against the policies of the government of Christian Democrat Francesco Cossiga and his Minister of Agriculture Giovanni Marcora, Arcangelo Lobianco had set himself against the DC and cautiously opened to a possible alliance with union trades. The day after the big event, L’Unità – the newspaper of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), Coldiretti's traditional opponent – noted with satisfaction that Lobianco intended to ‘initiate […] an intellectual opening to all social and union forces’. The article underlined that Lobianco's ‘words and emphases are quite different from those that resounded years ago in […] this same organization, when opposition to the working class, its parties and its trade unions constituted almost [its] raison d’être’. As L’Unità also reported, Lobianco's had two main demands for the government: that economic planning should pay more attention to agriculture, which in his view was too subordinate to other economic sectors; and ‘at the Community level, a policy based not only on the defense of prices, but also on structural interventions’. ²¹

In his speech at the General Assembly on the occasion of his official election as president of Coldiretti, Lobianco clarified his position with respect to the Christian Democrats and ‘the attenuation of a privileged political relationship’. ²² In a blunter turn of phrase, Lobianco accused the DC of ‘being an electoral committee of the government’ and praised the PCI for having ‘been able to interpret social demands, bridging the deficit of political responsiveness, attuning itself to the country’. ²³ He did not hold back from criticising Christian Democratic alliances with the Italian Socialist Party, which in his view had involved the DC ‘in the fashion and tactics of a socialism without doctrine’. ²⁴ Despite calling on the Christian Democrats to return to an organic political project, and on Coldiretti to rid itself of ‘any reverential fears’ concerning the relationship with the party, ²⁵ Lobianco also pointed out the prerogatives of his organisation, which in his opinion had not only ‘the right to […] 4 MEPs and […] 33 deputies and senators’, but, having always been ‘an essential component in the defense of democracy in Italy’, should once again become an integral part of the DC's political project. ²⁶

On the DC's part there was some concern about Coldiretti's announcements, but efforts were made to convey, at least to its European partners, the impression that its ‘collateral’ organisation was under control and was not going to mobilise at the European level. In a cable sent to the French Foreign Ministry, the agricultural attaché of the French Embassy in Rome reported on a private meeting held in April 1981, few months after Coldiretti's assembly, with the DC's person in charge of agricultural matters, Luciano Dal Falco. The latter's response to the French attaché's question regarding Coldiretti's major shift towards independence and a more radical form of mobilisation (syndicalisation) reveals the party's concerns and at the same time suggests that the DC believed Lobianco's attempts were destined to fail. According to the cable, Luciano Dal Falco said that ‘the independence of Coldiretti from the DC has limits because farmers join this organisation for reasons that are at least as much ideological as they are economic’, thus underlining the view that farmers were ideologically aligned with the DC. In the same vein, and not without polemical undertone, he referred to Lobianco's address stating Coldiretti's new political line by noting that ‘Lobianco should not forget that 80% of the executives of his organisation are elected based on their affiliation with the DC’. He ultimately reassured his French interlocutor that ‘the current ambiguity should be resolved at Coldiretti's next “organizational conference”’, thereby implying that the party could impose discipline on the organisation. ²⁷

Coldiretti's gradual move away from the DC was also closely linked to its direct engagement and mobilisation in EEC politics, especially in opposition to attempts to reduce the agricultural budget. ²⁸ As French attaché's cable also shows, the main field of contention was the question of what position to adopt in discussions over possible CAP reforms and the southern enlargement. In other words, national events alone cannot describe and explain the shifts that were taking place within Coldiretti. An article published in the organisation's weekly newspaper Il Coltivatore acknowledged exactly this European dimension and reported that the demonstration of 16 April in Rome ‘had had a significant precedent: the great ‘green march’ held in Strasbourg’. The national rally had in fact been preceded by a large European demonstration by Comité des organisations professionnelles agricoles (COPA), organised on 25 March 1980 in Strasbourg and in which Coldiretti and Lobianco had been leading participants. Lobianco had given a speech to farmers’ association representatives from all countries of the Community in which he outlined his position towards the European Commission and its plans for agricultural reform. Speaking on behalf of Coldiretti and criticising both the Community in general and the positions of the Italian government, in which he had served as Undersecretary of Agriculture to Minister Marcora, he said, ‘we believed in Europe, but we do not want to be betrayed by Europe and by those we sent to represent us and manage the European reality, which is ours, which belongs to us’. Commenting on attempts by the European Institutions to reduce CAP costs by neglecting to adjust agricultural prices against inflation, he reported that ‘the Commission's proposals represent a real provocation that offends […] the agricultural world’. In particular, he described the ‘price proposals’ as ‘criminal’. ²⁹

2. Coldiretti's shift towards confrontational politics: Europeanisation and the case of the French protesters

The use of such aggressive language was unusual for an organisation that had been a close ally of the governing party for decades. It signalled that although Coldiretti's estrangement from the DC had its roots in the national context, the organisation's focus in its political shift was on the European stage. Furthermore, as Coldiretti's participation in the European demonstration shows, its protest practices were influenced by enhanced contact with other European farmers’ organisations, which were more experienced in political confrontations with both their own governments and the EEC. By contrast, Coldiretti had little experience of open contestation: it was only two decades after its founding, in 1964, that it had organised its first protest actions against the centre-left government, accompanied by a great deal of doubt and internal conflict. Back then, Coldiretti's leadership had eventually opted for a series of local demonstrations and avoided concentrating farmers in Rome, where there was no rally because the local delegation in the Italian capital had categorically refused to organise anti-government protests. ³⁰ In the Community context, Coldiretti had remained similarly uninvolved in the March 1971 mobilisations against Sicco Mansholt's CAP reform plan. On that occasion, nearly 100,000 farmers, mainly from Belgium, France and Germany, had gathered to demonstrate in Brussels. The protest had soon taken a violent turn and by the end of the day not only had 100 farmers and 20 policemen been injured, but one of the demonstrators had been killed. ³¹

Having less experience than their European colleagues in demonstrations of this kind, Il Coltivatore commented almost in astonishment on the presence of ‘exasperated demonstrators and gendarmes in urban guerrilla gear’ at the March 1980 protests in Strasbourg, in which Coldiretti participated. The article tended to downplay the bitter recriminations against Great Britain, seen as responsible for the attempts to cut the CAP budget, which it claimed had prompted French farmers to burn British flags. ³² In his speech at the event, Lobianco called on all EEC farmers to form an alliance against their governments, the Council and the Commission, ‘trusting that the European Parliament would prove the farmers right’. What he saw as ‘nastiness’ – ‘cattiverie’ – proposed by the Commission and perpetrated on ‘agriculture would have serious repercussions on employment and the economy of all our countries, particularly for Italy, which is trying to overcome a serious economic crisis’. Echoing the tense atmosphere, he concluded his speech with the threat that ‘should the anger of the agricultural world explode, the fate of our democracies would be in danger’. ³³

The partnership that Lobianco sealed through Coldiretti's participation in the demonstration with other European farmers’ organisations was a partial shift not only from the organisation's traditional position in the national context, but also with regard to other member states, especially France. Since the creation at the beginning of the 1970s of an EEC policy for wine, a product that had hitherto been left out of the regulations and subsidies of the CAP, tensions had been growing between the Italian and the French governments at both a bilateral and a European level. In 1975, wine producers from southern France and especially from Languedoc began to protest what they perceived as a flood of cheaper Italian wines onto the French market. Their fierce protests successfully targeted the unloading of ships carrying Italian wine, especially in the port of Sète. Backing the demands of wine growers, the French government had reacted by suspending the free circulation of wine and introducing a tariff on Italian wine, a measure that had provoked a strong reaction from both the Italian government and the Commission and the initiation of an infringement procedure against France at the European level. ³⁴

Coldiretti had taken a clear stance in the so-called wine war, backing the position of the Italian government against France. For instance, in the winter of 1977, a year and a half after the blockade in the port of Sète, Il Coltivatore published an article with the title ‘The French attack on imports of Italian wine has been repulsed’. Its author praised with pride the action of the Italian Minister Marcora against the French government attempts to hamper the circulation of Italian wines on their national market. The article added that the Italian Minister had threatened his French colleague with the introduction of a series of ‘restrictions and obstacles to the entry of a wide range of agricultural and livestock products’ that were mostly imported from France and were rather significant, considering the Italian agricultural deficit. Furthermore, the article ridiculed and stigmatised the protests by the wine farmers of the Languedoc, dismissing them and the farmers themselves as ‘frantic’. ³⁵

However, Coldiretti's position towards the protests by the French vignerons was in fact more complex. During the assembly of 1980, it became evident that some members were looking at these practices with curiosity and even admiration. To take an example, during the national assembly a delegate from Piedmont, Marco Tara, pointed out some new forms of protest that farmers were trying out in his region. Tara asserted that ‘at the Community level something has to change’, and that it was necessary to counter the view that farmers had to ‘suffer because they [do not] have the weapon of a strike’. He added that farmers had ‘demonstrated in Rome and in Turin, where, out of exasperation, our farmers indulged in vandalism’. He emphasised, not without satisfaction, that the road and rail blockades at ‘Brenner and Luino [on the Swiss border], where the police took us off the tracks by force’, had proved to be effective protest practices. ³⁶ These kinds of actions had traditionally been ruled out by Coldiretti in order to distinguish itself from the Centri di azione agraria, which had engaged since the late 1950s in disruptive protests such as tractor rallies or pouring milk on the streets. These organisations were few in number and usually headed by ex-aristocrats with reactionary or openly fascist sympathies, a milieu from which Coldiretti clearly wanted to distance itself. ³⁷

Marco Tara's comments seem to indicate that a sizeable part of the organisation was beginning to rethink its protest practices. ³⁸ In his speech, he was most probably referring to a series of actions which had been carried out for the first time in his region, Piedmont, in the early 1970s. As the Turinese daily newspaper La Stampa reported, on 31 October 1973, farmers took over the streets of Turin for the first time. The journalist underlined that people from Turin ‘have never seen this kind of spectacle’, with tractors, ‘terrified chickens’, cows, and spilled milk brought into Turin's bourgeois and elegant centre. The protest mainly revolved around what livestock, dairy and egg farmers perceived to be unbearably low prices. This first protest was organised by Confagricoltura, the farmers’ organisation representing those with the biggest and most affluent farms. ³⁹ Just a few days later, however, Coldiretti organised an even bigger demonstration in Turin. For this protest, La Stampa reported, ten thousand farmers from the whole region of Piedmont marched with cows and tractors – five times more than were mobilised by Confagricoltura a few days earlier. According to the article, not only did some of the farmers indulge in vandalism, destroying cars, but they also attacked their regional leaders, who were welcomed with ‘a hail of potatoes’ when they spoke at the end of the rally. ⁴⁰

This act of rebellion against the regional leadership provides a clear indication of the crisis in Coldiretti's demobilisation strategy. The organisation's leaders aimed to steer farmers’ protests in ways that would not undermine the government's objectives at the regional, national or European levels. However, the grassroots saw the protest as an opportunity to express their political frustration. A few months later, and on a larger scale, farmers from the north–western Italian regions of Piedmont and Lombardy coordinated with the farmers from the north–eastern Trentino and Veneto to simultaneously block railway lines to France, Austria, and Switzerland as a protest against the import of meat and livestock from neighbouring countries. ⁴¹ In Marco Tara's view, these protests, which were limited to specific regions of the north and targeted the Alpine borders, should become a model for the national confederation to make its voice heard. Tara thus linked these experiences to the new actions planned at both the national and European level.

Europeanisation was one of the results of this new mobilisation and radicalisation, which emerged not only against the Italian government but also, counter-intuitively, against the EEC and in the clash between Italian and French farmers. A few months after the actions in Turin and on the Alpine borders, and in the context of the ‘wine war’, French winegrowers began protesting against Italian wine, giving many Italian farmers the impression that they too needed to raise their voices to defend their interests, just like the French. ⁴² The ‘wine war’ initiated by the French wine producers in Languedoc had received significant attention in the press and especially in Coldiretti's publications. ⁴³ Furthermore, it is not surprising that a delegate from Piedmont, a region directly bordering France and with first-hand experience in cross-border agricultural imports and exports, played a prominent role. The French and Italian governments had both implemented controls and tariffs that directly impacted this region. ⁴⁴

Although the French winegrowers were protesting the import of products from their Italian counterparts, their methods appeared to be very effective and inspired Italian farmers, who could also draw upon specific regional experiences, such as those in Piedmont in the early 1970s. The Piedmont delegation argued that Coldiretti needed to protect the interests of their members against both the national government (and therefore the Christian Democrats) and community institutions. Certainly, Italian wine producers generally – and especially those from southern Italy who, like their Languedoc counterparts, specialised in producing lower quality table wines – were negatively affected by the French blockade. Italian and French farmers seemed to share similar protest methods: although protests occurred locally in both countries, they often targeted border crossings and employed comparable tactics. Therefore, the techniques used against national governments and the EEC appeared to undergo a process of Europeanisation, albeit in the context of regional claims. In other words, if farmers sometimes protested against each other, as in the case of the ‘wine war’, they could nonetheless unite at the European level, as shown by the Strasbourg demonstration of 1980, and share similar protest practices.

The actions of the vignerons also resonated widely among farmers unconnected with Coldiretti. For instance, in September 1981, during the unresolved wine crisis that had reignited during the summer, ⁴⁵ winegrowers from the Sicilian province of Trapani, who were members of a left-wing farmers’ association, delivered a letter to the French consul requesting that it be forwarded to winegrowers in France. The appeal reflected the quandary faced by Sicilian winegrowers. On the one hand, emphasising their shared affiliation to the left-wing camp of the trade union movement, ‘the small and medium-sized producers of Trapani and Sicily’ highlighted the ‘many political and intellectual affinities with the small and medium-sized producers of the French Midi’; on the other, they condemned the protests of the ‘vignerons of the French Midi’ as ‘guerrilla acts’. Urging solidarity among peers, they called upon both the vignerons and ‘the French government authorities’ to ‘restore a climate of normalcy and calm’. ⁴⁶

The Sicilian winegrowers also sought to establish a political agenda that could unite the ‘producers of the French Midi and the Italian Mezzogiorno’. They envisioned ‘building an axis of understanding on wine between the two largest wine producing countries in the world’. In their view, this understanding would be rooted in the possibility ‘of an immediate agreement between the producers of the two countries and between their respective governments […] with the aim of urgently reforming the Common Agricultural Policy’. They believed that the CAP was ‘the main cause of economic, social and regional imbalances’. Concluding their appeal, which demanded that ‘wine be granted the same protection afforded to continental products’, the Sicilian winegrowers invoked the political heritage they shared with their French colleagues, which was based on the ‘contribution made during the ‘Resistance’ struggle by the farmers and workers of our two ‘Latin’ countries to the overthrow of dictatorships and nationalist trappings as well as the construction of a free, democratic, socially just, barrier-free, and solidly united Europe’. ⁴⁷

The letter highlights several crucial challenges faced by many southern Italian farmers in relation to both the EEC and their French colleagues, who actively blocked their products while accusing them of price dumping. On the one hand, the appeal demonstrated the Sicilians’ frustration with the lack of solidarity from their French colleagues; on the other, it conveys admiration for the French farmers’ effectiveness and calls for a united front among Mediterranean ‘Latin’ farmers against a common adversary: the unfair privileges bestowed by the CAP upon ‘continental’ farmers. Furthermore, the need to send the letter via the French consul highlights the absence of direct communication channels between the Sicilians and their transalpine counterparts, who were not affiliated with any major national or European agricultural organisations.

3. Transnational Mediterranean question at the European level – an alternative vision of Europe

In addition to highlighting dynamics of Europeanisation, the letter from the Trapani winegrowers shows the emergence of an alternative conception of Europe which departs from the idea of nation-states collaborating within a supranational or intergovernmental institution. This vision, which could also be considered a form of Europeanisation in a broader sense, ⁴⁸ suggests a potential opposition between macro-regions, such as the Mediterranean and the ‘continental’ areas. ⁴⁹ This perspective emphasises the importance of alliances and solidarity among different regional actors that transcend nation-state boundaries to address shared challenges and promote the specific macro-regional interests of agricultural producers within the broader European context. This idea resonated not only with leftist Sicilian winegrowers but also with central figures in Coldiretti and the European institutions.

One prominent figure in Coldiretti, Mario Vetrone, ⁵⁰ gave an address at the organisation's assembly in 1980 that highlighted the strong correlation between the accession of Greece, Spain, and Portugal to the European Community, the reform of the CAP, and the rise of a new Mediterranean question. Taking a stance against the idea put forward by many of Coldiretti's members that the main problem with the CAP was the rebalancing of guaranteed prices, Vetrone contended that enlargement offered an opportunity for a significant overhaul of the policy. He suggested that British objections to CAP expenditures should be regarded as a chance for comprehensive reform. He believed that completely ‘new objectives for the CAP’ should be defined ‘as a prerequisite for initiating the negotiations for Spain's accession’. And he proposed that the northern countries desire to admit ‘the three new Mediterranean countries’ in order to expand their markets for industrial and agricultural products might provide some bargaining power for Italian farmers in the negotiation process. As he contended, this position was not intended to hinder Spain's integration, but instead aimed to facilitate the entry of Spanish Mediterranean farmers into the Community and to ensure an improved and more advantageous position for them and for their Italian colleagues. ⁵¹

Vetrone expressed his concern about the substantial imbalance that had been inherent to the CAP since its inception, as it seemed primarily ‘devised to safeguard the agricultural output of continental regions, which, in agricultural terms, were already the most prosperous and possessed the highest production potential’. He pointed out that the CAP, with its focus on price support, had provided little benefit to those farmers working in regions where agriculture was more challenging and less productive for geographical and climatic reasons. He noted that despite the ‘Mediterranean package’, a set of measures introduced in 1977 to bolster Mediterranean products, the price support policy had proved to be ‘uneconomical … and discriminatory’ in the long run. It not ‘only created the problem of overproduction’ but also disproportionately ‘penalized producers operating in countries with high inflation rates, such as Italy’. Vetrone completed his reasoning by calling on the Community ‘to show true solidarity, particularly in the sector of typical Mediterranean products’, which had been disadvantaged in at least three key aspects: the exclusion of most Mediterranean products from the price guarantee system; the general focus of the CAP on quantity; and the problem of prices within the context of inflation. ⁵²

In addition to this argument, which had already been advanced by many others in debates on the CAP, Vetrone presented an innovative perspective by casting doubt on Coldiretti's capacity to fairly represent the interests of both northern and southern Italian farmers. He suggested that defending the status quo of the CAP not only favoured northern Europe, but also prioritised the agricultural concerns of northern regions within Italy, characterised by continental agriculture and more productive flatlands. This, he argued, overlooked the needs of farmers in the hilly, mountainous, and coastal regions of central and southern Italy. As a prominent member of the organisation, he asserted that Coldiretti could effectively represent the interests of all farmers, but only if it placed due emphasis on Mediterranean production. He believed that overhauling the CAP in support of Mediterranean products would ultimately benefit the entire national economy. Italy, he pointed out, faced a chronic deficit of cereals and milk and was forced to buy them at CAP prices – higher than those on the world market – primarily from France. Vetrone highlighted the significance of traditional Mediterranean products as ‘a vital support for the economic system of our Mezzogiorno’ and as typical export goods. Thus, if adequately supported, these products could help ‘cover a significant portion of the currency outlay needed to purchase continental products’. Vetrone contended that if the CAP could not be substantially reformed, then it would fall upon ‘Italian farmers to “pay” the price of enlargement’. ⁵³ Vetrone's insights show that divergent interests were not strictly bound by national borders but were rather shaped by geographic and climatic factors. His observations reveal the complexity of regional interests, indicating that national organisations might not consistently capture the diverse concerns of their regions.

This conflict between continental and Mediterranean regions was to an extent applicable to France as well. France was perceived by many Coldiretti members as a competitor – especially given the events of the ‘wine war’ and the large Italian agricultural imports from France – but also as their sole possible ally in negotiations on the accession of Spain to the EEC. By early 1977, an article published in Coldiretti's weekly magazine presented the French government as a potential partner for reshaping the position of Mediterranean agricultural goods by making the admission of Spain and Portugal conditional on a decisive redefinition of the CAP. ⁵⁴ As the agricultural attaché at the French embassy in Rome put it at the end of 1981, ‘for all Italian political forces, France is the closest European partner and the “natural ally”’ especially when it comes to ‘rebalancing the CAP in favor of Mediterranean products’. ⁵⁵

In Italy the distinction between different farmers’ associations was mainly political and based on the farm size, with Confagricoltura as a conservative lobby representing the interests of bigger farmers, Coldiretti acting for small landowners, and the associations close to the trade union Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL), such as Confcoltivatori, advocating for the mostly leftist farmers from specific regions, especially central Italy. In France, by contrast, the Fédération nationale des syndicats d'exploitants agricoles (FNSEA), the biggest French farmers’ organisation, aspired to represent the interests of both big and small landowners across the whole country. This had de facto resulted in the interests of larger businesses specialised in cereals and dairy and concentrated in the Parisian region being prioritised over those of smaller landowners. In other words, the FNSEA combined in the same federation the distinct interests of small and large producers, who in the Italian case were represented separately by the competing Coldiretti and Confagricoltura. Furthermore, during the first two decades of the Fifth Republic, the FNSEA, like Coldiretti and Confagricoltura, had been very close to the conservative governments and had enjoyed direct access to the Ministry of Agriculture. ⁵⁶

During the ‘wine war’, regional divisions between the south and the rest of the country reached a new level of intensity in France. These tensions were expressed mainly in disagreements between the FNSEA and those who refused to join it. Indeed, the latter group included most of the protesting vignerons, all concentrated in the Midi, who accused the FNSEA of being mainly concerned with distributing the generous spoils of the CAP among cereal producers, its richest and most influential members. Conversely, the FNSEA saw the southern vignerons as ideological antagonists – left-wingers opposed not only to the FNSEA, but to European integration in general, who could not be truly incorporated into their organisation. This situation accounts for the ambiguity in the FNSEA's reaction to the protests of the Midi wine growers. Like the French governments under President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the FNSEA was mainly interested in protecting the status quo of the CAP, which it felt was threatened by the demands of the British government, and therefore in appeasing the protests of the winegrowers as soon as possible. ⁵⁷

However, just a few months after Coldiretti's assembly, which announced a shift towards greater combativeness, the whole power system of the FNSEA and its traditionally alignment to the government was radically destabilised. In May 1981, François Mitterrand was elected as the first socialist president of the Fifth Republic, and he subsequently appointed Édith Cresson, a total stranger to the FNSEA, to the Ministry of Agriculture. Cresson introduced a major innovation in the way agricultural organisations were consulted. She rejected the model under which the FNSEA was the Ministry's only legitimate partner. For instance, she also invited smaller associations to the annual conference held between the Minister and the FNSEA, such as the Mouvement de défense des exploitants familiaux (MODEF), which had many members also among the vignerons in the south. The inclusion of other organisations was perceived by the FNSEA and its President François Guillaume as inappropriately legitimising for other unions and a threat to the special relationship between the confederation and the government. An internal note from the Ministry of Agriculture regarding the conference held in September 1981 commented on the FNSEA President's frustration with the new situation: ‘Guillaume reproaches the Minister […] for no longer being considered as the sole privileged interlocutor of the agricultural profession’. ⁵⁸ Eventually, Guillaume and the FNSEA were able to celebrate a small victory over the new agriculture minister. In March 1983 Mitterrand gave Cresson another post in his government and entrusted the agriculture ministry to Michel Rocard, who was considerably less disliked by the FNSEA. However, the new focus on other agricultural organisations and the regional issue of the Midi was maintained through successive governments under Mitterrand.

The CAP, along with the special representation of farmers by conservative parties, had served from its inception in 1962 as means of demobilising farmers at the European level. However, due to various factors, this system became less effective between the mid-1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, prompting farmers to seek new ways to make their voices heard at the regional, national, and European levels. Just like Coldiretti, whose close ties with the Christian Democrats were eroding, the FNSEA also felt that their exclusive representation channels both in Europe and in France were being challenged by the new government. In turn, the southern winegrowers believed that their interests were not being adequately represented by the FNSEA, which prioritised the defense of wealthy ‘continental’ farmers. Furthermore, the protest movement sparked off by the issue of Italian wine was growing, and the methods tested within this context were taken up by the movement protesting Spain's entry into the EEC. Indeed, in the summer of 1981, in parallel with the blockade of ships carrying Italian wine, farmers in the Midi had intercepted and destroyed consignments of fruit from Spain destined for the French market. ⁵⁹

Both the French government and the FNSEA feared that they would lose control of the situation in the Midi and that the protests could spread to other regions that had traditionally rebelled against the central authorities in Paris. Faced with the possibility of new regionalisms exacerbating the already difficult relations both nationally and in the European context, the French government and the FNSEA took different approaches to restoring national unity. An anonymous confidential document, presumed to date from early 1982 and originating from within the French Socialist Party, sketched out some key political strategies concerning the protests in the south. The document clarified that ‘suggesting, even briefly, that we could oppose Spanish membership would strengthen the position of the PCF [Parti communiste français] and lend weight to its rejection [of enlargement]’. Instead, it proposed that the question of Spain should be used as a tool to highlight the inconsistency of the Communists, who declared ‘solidarity with the Spanish people’ but ‘categorically rejected the enlargement’ of the Community. The note also acknowledged the difficulties with the Italian government and dismissed the idea of renegotiating the position of Mediterranean producers under the CAP before Spain's accession. According to the confidential note, ‘Italy is weak’ and ‘has never been able nor dared to pursue effectively its Mediterranean interests in the European institution’. And, the author concluded by saying that it is ‘François Mitterrand's France alone that has the will and the ability to impose on Europe its own revival, which is being played out at present largely on the shores of the Mediterranean’. The author envisioned that ‘France should carry the claims of the south and take the lead in this movement’ to restore dignity to Spain, adding that ‘Italy will follow’. ⁶⁰ The government appeared to want to tackle the issue of Spanish accession head-on by putting a national Mediterranean policy at the heart of its interests. ⁶¹

While the socialist government sought to accelerate Spain's accession and firmly oppose the Midi protests, the FNSEA pursued a different strategy. The organisation maintained its ambiguity regarding the Mediterranean enlargement to avoid harming the interests of its majority members, for whom the new EEC-members offered export markets for their cereals and dairy products. ⁶² However, once the decisions on Spain and Portugal's entry had already been made and export quotas for cereals and milk secured, the FNSEA eventually sided with the vignerons, opposing the government. At the FNSEA's 1985 annual assembly, held in the heart of the wine-growing Languedoc, François Guillaume firmly criticised Agriculture Minister Michel Rocard for the unfair arrangements made for Spain's accession. The press noted this attempt to gain support from the Midi wine growers who had previously refused to join the FNSEA. ⁶³ What united both the government and the FNSEA was a desire to prevent the emergence of strong regionalisms, which could interfere with their authority at the European scale.

While a concern that regions might produce interference for national actors on the European level seems to have been central in the French case, other influential voices in the debate about CAP reform and enlargement presented very different perspectives. Lorenzo Natali, a former member of Coldiretti, vice president of the European Commission, and Commissioner for Enlargement, emerged as a herald of the international dimension to the contrast between Mediterranean and continental agriculture. ⁶⁴ For instance, during his speech at Coldiretti's assembly in October 1980, Natali drew attention to the sweeping changes in the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Middle East since 1979, and especially the ‘Iranian revolution’, ‘the Russian invasion of Afghanistan’, ‘the events in Poland’, and the ‘very recent war between Iran and Iraq’. ⁶⁵ He reminded the audience that the high tensions between North and South, intensified by the oil crises of the 1970s, ⁶⁶ were no longer playing out in the context of détente between East and West but rather amid an apparent escalation. Natali described a scenario where a new phase of the cold war overlapped with the unresolved issues of north–south relations, pinpointing the Mediterranean as a key geographical focal point where global disparities between the North and South were prominently unfolding.

As an EEC commissioner with a broader view of global politics, Natali warned Coldiretti that it could remain ‘an important component of national social forces’ only if it was capable of ‘understanding the complexity of the moment in which we live’ and ‘helping to overcome it’. He encouraged the organisation to see Greece's accession to the EEC and the candidacies of Portugal and Spain as events ‘of great political significance for the maintenance of peace and democracy in the Mediterranean’. However, he believed that enlargement brought ‘to the surface knots that had never been untied at the national and EEC levels’. Natali argued that Coldiretti and Italy more generally should avoid antagonising ‘the future partners’ Spain and Portugal. He highlighted the need to address the tensions between the interests of different Italian regions and different Mediterranean countries that would result from EEC enlargement. In his view, an enlargement without substantial reforms would lead to a ‘war among the poor’, setting farmers from different Mediterranean EEC and non-EEC countries against each other. ⁶⁷

Natali emphasised that tensions between different types of agriculture and different economic sectors had a common root in Mediterranean countries and should, therefore, be addressed jointly rather than by pitting countries against each other. He called for an overall renegotiation of the EEC's agricultural policy and the position of southern countries in the Community. At a seminar organised by the CISL, the trade union closest to the Catholics, he explained that the accession of Spain would fundamentally change the economic structure of the enlarged Community from a ‘dualistic’ division to a ‘trialistic’ one. To the ‘regions of old industrialisation in central and northern Europe and less developed regions of the Mediterranean south’ he added a third transnational macro-region: the ‘regions of recent industrialisation’, such as the ‘North and Centre of Italy and Spain’. According to Natali, these areas would have to bear a double economic burden: namely, to ‘move closer to the more developed economies’ while also ‘transferring part of their income to the less developed regions’ within their own nation-states. He argued that a substantial EEC intervention was the only solution to this structural disadvantage, affecting not only agriculture but the entire economies of countries like Italy and Spain. He stressed that if the Community's budget was not increased, ‘any attempt at economic and monetary integration’ would become ‘scarcely credible and politically unacceptable’. ⁶⁸ Therefore, the Community should relieve Mediterranean nation-states of the economic burden of supporting their less industrialised regions in order to solve tensions between different regions within the Mediterranean countries of the EEC.

However, Natali neglected to address the issue of relations with non-Community Mediterranean countries following southern enlargement. This was particularly urgent in the case of Italy, which at least until the 1973 oil crisis and the Iranian revolution of 1979 had consistently tried, in line with the doctrine known as neo-Atlanticism, to reconcile its position within the Western bloc and the Atlantic alliance with a role as elective partner to certain non-aligned Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries. ⁶⁹ As in the case of Mario Vetrone also Lorenzo Natali remained ambiguously strained between a willingness to denounce injustices arising from the agricultural policy and a commitment to defend the status quo. On the one hand, he reaffirmed the desire for cooperation and a privileged relationship with the other Mediterranean countries; but at the same time, he tended to reaffirm the need to protect Mediterranean products from the difficulties that the entry of the new countries into the Community would entail.

Natali's speech revealed multiple discourses concerning the Mediterranean as an economic, cultural and political region. First and foremost, he recognised the Mediterranean as a region homogeneous enough to be considered under the same standard criteria. He was clearly referring to the definition of the Mediterranean that had been established during discussions preceding the 1972 Global Mediterranean Policy agreement, which included all the coastal states from Spain to Israel. ⁷⁰ In Natali's speech, however, this idea of a single region broke down into a complex prism of oppositions, mainly between North and South. For example, while on the one hand he referred to a distinction between north and south within the EEC, pointing out the economic favouring of ‘Northern’ farmers, on the other he pointed to North–South differences within countries such as Italy and Spain. Here, too, he spoke of the advantages granted to northern regions, both in industry and in agricultural policy under the CAP. To this, he added a further rift within the Mediterranean region between a North in the future Community and a South outside it.

This article's analysis of Coldiretti's positions, the tensions between the French government and different groups of French farmers, and the views of a high-ranking European politician (Lorenzo Natali) reveals Mediterranean agriculture to be a significant transnational question. The Mediterranean macro-region offered a potential avenue for alternative Europeanisation, interacting in intricate ways with the perspectives presented by nation-states and the European institutions. It fostered a shared sense of identity and common interests among farmers across national borders. However, different levels of economic competition within the actual EEC, the envisioned enlarged EEC, and non-EEC Mediterranean countries acted as a counterbalance to this sense of solidarity. Coldiretti and FNSEA, having both lost their direct representation at the European level for different reasons, were compelled to mobilise and find new ways to participate in the CAP discussion. This occurred concurrently with the emergence of regional interests, which challenged the legitimacy of the farmers’ associations at the national level.

4. Conclusion

Focusing on the perspective of several Italian and French farmers’ associations, the article demonstrates that the system built mainly by conservative and Christian democratic parties to demobilise farmers faced a deep crisis between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s. This suggests that the period can hardly be conceived as marked by indifference or a ‘permissive consensus’ concerning the policies of the EEC – at least, not when it came to major stakeholders with thousands, or in the Italian case, millions of members. For Italy's main farmers’ organisation, Coldiretti, political engagement with the EEC intensified as the relationship with the DC began to falter in the mid-1970s, leading the organisation to seek new ways to express its interests and exert influence on the national and European political scenes. In its efforts to find new modes of protest, Coldiretti closely examined the practices and positions of other European organisations, undergoing a process of Europeanisation in the process: shared opposition to specific policies of the European institutions created a new arena for transnational exchange. Even in cases like the ‘wine war’ between France and Italy, where the two countries’ interests seemed explicitly opposed, there was still consistent sharing of protest practices. Furthermore, leftist farmers directly affected by the crisis who were not members of Coldiretti, such as the Trapani winegrowers, could envision scenarios of solidarity with their French colleagues based on their shared belonging to the Mediterranean region. One of the main things Mediterranean farmers had in common was their experience of relative disadvantage compared to continental agriculture.

The contrast between the Mediterranean and ‘continental’ macro-regions constituted another possible path of Europeanisation, based on an alternative vision of Europe that competed with the prevailing perspectives championed by European institutions and national governments. ⁷¹ This vision was fundamentally built on the existence of macro-regions that united diverse regions within different nation-states. Some voices within Coldiretti questioned whether a national association could fairly represent farmers from different regions with distinct cultures, climates, and agricultural methods. In France, various national groups attempted to co-opt this regionalist movement. Moreover, this vision of Europe was partly derived from the idea of a Mediterranean region transcending the borders of the current and future EEC. However, the idea of Mediterranean Europe seemed to fragment into a multitude of contradictions suspended between solidarity, competition, and divisions between EEC member countries – or potential members – and excluded Mediterranean countries.

The exploration of a salient moment in the history of European integration has shown that, notwithstanding the demobilisation fostered by the Christian Democrats in particular, farmers’ associations in Italy and France developed a wide range of positions that demonstrate their deep knowledge of and engagement with European questions. The focus on specific social actors has revealed how deeply they were affected by integration, leading to a complex interplay of conflicts, compromises, and collaborations. Contrary to the widely held belief in a ‘permissive consensus’, this article has illuminated the intense politicisation of European issues. This challenges narratives that paint the history of the EEC as one of unalloyed success. Instead, it portrays European integration and Europeanisation as a multifaceted process of continual confrontations and accommodations between evolving ideas of Europe. This intricate fabric of European integration counters the notion of a conflict-free past, offering a perspective that can also shed light on the challenges faced by the Brussels institutions today.