Passage 2
Disputes over farm trade have bedeviled the current round of GATT talks from the start. On cereals, Europe and America have squabbled most fiercely. However, officials on both sides were optimistic that a deal on farming, which would unlock the rest of the round, was within reach.
America has shown some flexibility, and Europe should respond. Much of the EC would like to. Germany’s willingness to embrace farm reform enabled the Community to produce its planned reform of the CAP last spring. Germany’s role over the next few days will again be crucial, for it must tell France that its threat to block the Uruguay round is intolerable. To carry out that threat, France is likely to need German support. The Community decides its trade policy by qualified majority vote; France has not straight forward right of veto. Without allies, its only 【course】 would be to block the decision by citing “vital national interests”——the sort of profoundly 【unEuropean thing】 that Britain might do, but which France would rather not.
39.What does CAP stand for?