This house would abolish the Common Agricultural Policy - Poll Result and Report Card

Report Card by Miss SSDI
The following observations [below the break, so keep reading!] are only a simple evaluation with no intention of harming neither the proposing or the opposing group and that’s why there will be no [mercy] in them.  [...]

First Prop starts by explaining what the CAP is and why it was created for. Right after that, he lists some problems that make this policy inadmissible and that is why it needs to be reformed. He continues by giving his own definition of “abolish”. What first caught my attention was how he assumes that his definition is the official, a if it was the one of the dictionary. I looked up the meaning of abolish because I thought it would be important and essential for the purposes of this debate.

For what I knew, “abolish” meant to eliminate a law or, in this case, a policy, and what I found when I looked that word up was that in fact it means “to bring to an end”, “eradicate”. So when he states that it does not mean to destroy it completely he is doing so because of his miscomprehension of the actual meaning of the word abolish.

In the next paragraphs he starts developing the main problems that this policy has. These arguments are really convincing, as for example the one that said that this policy gives some advantage to rich landlords over small farmers, it divides money by land properties and not by production. This last argument really caught my attention because some farmers are receiving money without even producing, this policy is supposed to help the farmers to lower down their final cost of their product. He states that these problems appeared because of the big evolution Europe has had and on the other hand the CAP has not evolved at all.

He explains in the last paragraph that they want to reform it. I think then he really has a good point but he went to the wrong direction when he used the word “abolish” with his own definition of it as closed.

First opp points out the definition of “abolish”, because, as I did, he found it relevant for the development of this essay. It actually means “complete annulation”. He does not explain his arguments very well, he just says absurd things like “Imagine that you won’t be able to have a real Camembert”, he just says what would happen if the CAP disappeared but he doesn’t write arguments as why to keep it unchanged.

Second Prop he realizes the big impact that the word “abolish” had in their speech, so they rephrase their main argument to what I think is a better one. They explain their objectives  better, that was the only thing that was missing in the first proposing speech.

They affirm they want to abolish the CAP but that is more important, they want to replace it by a better version of it. He affirms that won’t lead to the loss of food specialties of each country as the first opposing speech said.

Second Opp keeps arguing that abolishing the CAP will result in the loss of traditional products, called “terroir” in french. He says that the CAP just needs a big reform, and I agree with that argument. It gives people the security they aren’t eating polluted or transgenic vegetables. Food quality is the most important argument they give.

He also argues about the instability this planet has diplomatically. If the CAP is abolished, Europe would rely on other countries to supply food, instead of being capable of self-producing it. And his last point is about the environment, to grow food in a green way. I really think that taking care of our planet should be the main goal of everyone, so I agree with this argument, but that the CAP would help with that, I can not be sure.

Third Prop starts saying that there won’t be a problem with transgenic vegetables because Europe forbiddens this plantations. So reforming the CAP won’t have any effect on that. The proposing speeches have a point, but I think this last one exceeded the limits, he starts almost insulting the opposing speeches, instead of defending his point he attacks the other.

Third Opp explains how the proposer’s side does not clearly explain its intentions. Because they want to abolish the policy, and then replace it; they didn’t explain and developed their point very convincingly. The last argument of the opposing team is that the CAP provides a cohesion to the European Union, it provide a  huge money transfer between the EU citizens, and EU has common targets that together they can try and achieve, that without a common approach they would be difficult to reach.

SSDI