scholarly journals THE PROS AND CONS OF THE EU COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY

Author(s):  
Aldona ZAWOJSKA

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union has generated a great deal of attention and controversy among research community, practitioners and the wider population. The aim of this study is to overview and to discuss the thoughts and comments on the CAP which have been addressed by both its proponents and its opponents in the scientific publications, political commentaries, official reports, pubic opinion surveys and social-media-based public forums. While on the one hand, recent public opinion poll (Eurobarometer 2016) indicated broad support among EU citizens for the CAP; on the other hand, other sources give some strong arguments in favour of reducing or even scrapping the CAP. The CAP supporters (including European Commission itself) highlight, among others, the benefits of this policy (environmental; cultural; social vitality; food variety, quality and security; maintaining of rural employment, etc.) for all European citizens and not only for farmers, while CAP opponents stress its unfairness both to non-farmers (e.g. huge financial costs of its policy for taxpayers) and small farmers (large farmers benefit most), heavy administrative burden for farmers as well as the CAP’s destructing impact both on the EU states’ agriculture systems and developing countries’ agricultural markets. The CAP is basically the same for all EU member states but the EU countries differ considerably in terms of their rural development. According to some views, the CAP does not fit the Central and Eastern European countries. It represents a failure of the EU to adjust adequately from an exclusively Western European institution into a proper pan-European organization.

2006 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-470
Author(s):  
Srdjan Redzepagic

Agriculture posed considerable tensions for the processes of enlargement of the European Union, because of its continuing importance both in the economies of the applicant countries of Central and Eastern European countries which have joined EU on the 1st may 2004., and in the EU budget and acquits communautaire. The preparation of agriculture in the candidate countries to join the EU was rendered more complex by the fact that the Community's Common Agricultural Policy was a moving target. The aim of this paper is to show the bases elements of the Common Agricultural Policy, but also to provide a survey of recent developments relating to agriculture in the EU and new member states of the EU before their accession to EU and their preparation to access on the enlarged market, in order to indicate the main challenges and difficulties posed by enlargement. It seems likely that agricultural policy in the enlarged EU will attach increased priority to objectives such as rural development and the environment. However, these new priorities may be expensive to realize, and may impose a growing burden on the national budgets of EU member states.


2012 ◽  
Vol 49 (No. 2) ◽  
pp. 62-66
Author(s):  
D. Ahner

The paper deals with the particular stages of development of the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the last forty years. The process and impacts of CAP reforms are analyzed for the particular production industries of agriculture. The paper also presents a detailed description of Agenda 2000 and mid-term review of the Common Agricultural Policy in 2002 that brought about many proposals for the future working of CAP after accession of Central and Eastern European countries.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 582-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vítor João Pereira Domingues Martinho

AbstractThe milk sector across the European Union (EU) has experienced several changes, due to the intrinsic characteristics of its respective structures of production. In fact, due to significant increases in production, this sector has suffered dramatic surplus supplies, which have had a relevant impact, namely on the market’s management. In this framework, the EU created the milk quota system in the 1980s to control the milk markets and prepare the sector for the subsequent reforms verified by the agricultural policy instruments. However, this system was a temporary measure from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and was removed in 2015, having new and relevant impacts on the sector around Europe and, specifically, in Portugal. In this context, the main objective of this research was to assess the several impacts from the several reforms of the CAP instruments for the milk sector within the Portuguese context. For this, a literature survey from the Web of Science (Core Collection) was carried out searching for the topics “milk” and “Common Agricultural Policy.” From this search, 57 documents (only articles were considered, excluding, for example, proceedings papers) were obtained. To complement this literature review, several data from the Eurostat and from the Portuguese agricultural market information system were considered and explored through econometric approaches. The main insights obtained show that the milk sector is a controversial topic, which continues to need special policy attention, namely to avoid asymmetries across the several EU member-states.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 3462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Artiom Volkov ◽  
Tomas Balezentis ◽  
Mangirdas Morkunas ◽  
Dalia Streimikiene

The European Union (EU) is an integrated alliance of equally treated Member States sharing mutual values, legal principles and markets. Close cooperation, deep integration and convergence are the major priorities for the EU. Anyway, these principles are not always reflected in the EU-wide policies which are implemented through financial support mechanisms. The direct payments financial support mechanism under the Common Agricultural Policy, the main instrument for promoting convergence in development of Member States’ agricultural sectors and rural sustainability, faces critique for failing to meet its objectives. One of the major deficiencies of the direct payments scheme is that it allocates more resources to already developed agricultural sectors of the older Member States and less resources to developing ones thus increasing the divergence among the Member States. The aim of this paper is to suggest new mechanisms for direct payment funds redistribution across the EU Member States which are based on the methodological principles that would more precisely correspond to the aims of convergence, transparency and fair redistribution. The results show that, regardless of the method chosen (to support more or less effective agricultural sectors of EU Member States), the proposed methodology lowers differences in direct payment rates among the EU Member States by two-fold. This ensures correspondence to the goal of convergence within the EU.


2012 ◽  
Vol 49 (No. 2) ◽  
pp. 71-79
Author(s):  
S. Tangermann

Inclusion of the countries in Central Europe (CECs) in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union raises a large number of issues, not the least in the context of the accession negotiations among the current EU member states and the newcomers. However, in the process of enlargement, negotiations will also be necessary with other countries. This is because both the EU and the accession candidates have commitments in the WTO and inclusion of the CECs in the CAP may affect the nature of these commitments, as well as the ability of the enlarged Union to honour them. The paper deals with the fundamental problems in connection with presented themes.


Author(s):  
Niamh Hardiman ◽  
David M. Farrell ◽  
Eoin Carolan ◽  
John Coakley ◽  
Aidan Regan ◽  
...  

Modern Ireland is a relatively wealthy and politically stable democracy, but it bears the deep marks of its route to this point. This introductory chapter draws together some key themes that run through this volume and profiles the core contributions of each of its chapters. The overall story is one of contradictory influences. The political institutions of the state, notwithstanding much innovation over time, retain a bias toward a remarkably strong executive. The long-standing weaknesses of social democratic electoral mobilization both reflect and reinforce a conservative and market-oriented tilt in policy priorities. The ideas that animate public discourse show a creative but sometimes problematic tension between republican and communitarian ideals on the one hand, and liberal ideas and values on the other. Ireland has assumed a confident role on the world stage and especially within the European Union (EU), but relations with its nearest neighbour, the United Kingdom, can often be problematic, not least because of the complexity of the politics of Northern Ireland. And while on many measures Ireland is among the wealthiest of the EU member states, this is not the lived reality for a great many of its citizens, and the nuances of why this is so need to be carefully assessed. Overall, this introductory chapter offers an overview of the whole Handbook while also making an original contribution in its own right.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-32
Author(s):  
Bartosz Soloch

Abstract Recent decisions of European and national courts, as well as those of arbitral tribunals, concerning the Achmea saga seem to be plentiful enough to draw preliminary conclusions as to the relationship between EU law, intra-EU international investment agreements (IIAs) and the national laws of EU-Member States. In order to get the proper picture of the situation, however, it is necessary not only to analyse the recent decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and their consequences from these three perspectives, but, equally, to understand how they interact with each other. Such an analysis indicates the real possibility of the emergence of a rift between the practice of the EU and national courts rejecting the validity of investment arbitration agreements, on the one hand, and investment tribunals, on the other. In any case, such a divergence would put into question the IIAs’ claim to provide a stable regulatory framework for international investments in the EU, which, in turn, would strengthen the argument for termination of intra-EU IIAs.


Author(s):  
Christilla Roederer-Rynning

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) can be fruitfully construed as an instance of European embedded liberalism, shaped by overlapping layers of domestic, European Union, and international policymaking. Such a conceptualization reveals the large role of domestic politics, even in an area like the CAP, where policy competences were early on extensively transferred to the supranational level. This in turn reflects the rather prominent role of national governments in the EU construction, compared with traditional federal polities. This role can be probed by analyzing two related scholarly agendas: an agenda devoted to the shaping of the CAP by member states (policy shaping); and an agenda devoted to the domestic impact of the CAP. Current policy challenges highlight our need to develop our understanding of: (1) the interaction between different types of CAP decisions at the EU level; (2) the domestic impact of the CAP; (3) and the experience of Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC).


2012 ◽  
Vol 49 (No. 6) ◽  
pp. 278-283
Author(s):  
M. Vosejpková

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is of the character of a highly protective policy of the EU Member States. It includes a number of measures distorting the market directly and influences the farmers’ incomes depending on their production. There have been two reforms of the CAP so far and the third one is prepared with intention to come into force from 2006; it is called Mid-Term Review (MTR). This reform is concentrated on keeping and increasing consumers’ credibility and shifting to more competitive agriculture more orientated on market needs. The main Reform proposals include horizontal issues, i.e. Decoupling, Modulation/Degressivity, Cross-compliance, Farm Advisory System, IASC, Rural Development, and market issues concern dairy, cereals, rye, durum wheat, dried fodder, potato starch, seeds, nuts, rice, set-aside, carbon credit, beef. Besides the above mentioned goals, it is necessary to ensure conditions for rural development together with demands on environmental protection and improvement, so-called second pillar of the CAP. The attempt of cross-sectional summary and analysis of the MTR impacts for the EU was made in the article based on results of six studies performed by universities and DG AGRI in Brussels.


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