ABSTRACT
The collapse of the Heysel meeting marked a low point in the Uruguay Round negotiations and stimulated renewed efforts by the protagonists to reach some measure of agreement and hence rescue the talks from failure. The months after the failed Ministerial were absorbed with these intense diplomatic efforts. Few new ideas were introduced, and the negotiations became more political and less technocratic. Agreement on the structure of an agricultural package did not occur until February 1991, when the EU indicated that it could live with the outlines of the US (and Cairns Group) position on the scope of an eventual package. 94 This opened the way for diplomacy and compromise rather than posturing. The efforts were essentially devoted first to securing a bilateral deal between the US and the EU and then developing the details of an agreement that would apply to all the participating countries. Finally the agricultural package had to be put back into the overall Uruguay Round Agreement. This could only happen after the EU had secured substantial modifications in its own internal agricultural policy so as to be able to live with the changes implied by a GATT agreement. How this EU policy change led to the completion of the Uruguay Round is an important aspect of the story of farm policy reform in the 1990s, and is the subject of this chapter.
