The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee criticises the European Commission's proposed sweeping reforms of the CAP that would see the current complex and bureaucratic system of direct payments replaced by one that could be even worse. These changes include a new tier of environmental conditions, with penalties for farm businesses that do not comply or fail to meet new criteria for 'active' farmers, farm size and number of employees. The Committee sets out the key principles the UK government should promote. The first objective of the CAP should be to maintain and enhance the EU's capacity to produce food with a significant degree of self sufficiency and, in the long term, less reliance on income support from the tax payer. The UK's future food security is threatened by the low profitability of its agriculture. More than half of UK farm businesses would be unprofitable without the support they receive through the CAP. The Committee concludes that direct payments have a place within the CAP for as long as business conditions in agriculture fail to deliver a thriving and profitable industry. The CAP must deliver a competitive and viable agricultural sector that produces safe and high quality food with a lower environmental impact. The UK should press for the EU to argue more strongly for recognition of environmental and animal welfare production standards within trade agreements. The committee also warns that the EU proposal for a multi-tiered single farm payment will require expensive new computer systems and auditing.

The CAP has traditionally been at the core of the European Communities and even now consumes half of the European Union's budget. This book emphasizes the long-term link between the CAP and the budget. It examines the aims of the Common Agricultural Policy as set out in the Treaty of Rome and discusses to what extent they have been achieved and whether they are relevant to the 21st century. The factors that have shaped the 1992 and 1999 CAP reforms are outlined, with the latter, in particular, demonstrating the budget's effect on CAP and CAP reforms. The internationalization of CAP with constraints being placed on it by the World Trade Organization is another important factor covered by the book. The 1999 reforms are measured against what may be allowed by the WTO and the demands of EU enlargement. This title is published in conjunction with UACES, the University Association for Contemporary European Studies. UACES web site can be found at www.uaces.org

After five years of debates, consultations and negotiations, the European institutions reached an agreement in 2013 on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the 2014-2020 period. The outcome has major implications for the EU’s budget and farmers’ incomes, but also for Europe’s environment, its contribution to global climate change and to food security in the EU and in the world. It was decided to spend more than €400 billion during the rest of the decade on the CAP. The official claims are that the new CAP will take better account of society's expectations and lead to far-reaching changes by making subsidies fairer and ‘greener’ and making the CAP more efficient. It is also asserted that the CAP will play a key part in achieving the overall objective of promoting smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. However, there is significant scepticism about these claims and disappointment with the outcome of the decision-making, the first in which the European Parliament was involved under the co-decision procedure. In contrast to earlier reforms where more substantive changes were made to the CAP, the factors that induced the policy discussions in 2008-13 and those that influenced the decision-making did not reinforce each other. On the contrary, they sometimes counteracted one another, yielding an ‘imperfect storm’ as it were, resulting in more status quo and fewer changes. This book discusses the outcome of the decision-making and the factors that influenced the policy choices and decisions. It brings together contributions from leading academics from various disciplines and policy-makers, and key participants in the process from the European Commission and the European Parliament.

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the Common Agricultural Policy which imposes high costs on taxpayers and consumers yet has proved very difficult to reform. Particular emphasis is placed on new developments affecting the shape of the CAP, including the outcome of the GATT Uruguay Round negotiations, Eastern enlargement, and developments in environmental policy. A distinctive feature of the book is the attention given to situating European agriculture within its global context and in relation to the food processing and agricultural supply industries.

Understanding the cap; Mechanisms and analysis of the cap; The cap and the european union; The cap and the world; The cap and the future.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is a unique agricultural policy worldwide. For many years, its status as the only common European Community (EC) policy governed by EC institutions put it at the heart of European integration. Today the CAP is not the only common European Union (EU) policy. Even while it remains the sole instance of a regionally integrated agricultural policy, the CAP no longer embodies the same degree of cross-national harmonization of agricultural policy among EC/EU member states that it once did. The CAP has undergone policy reforms in the past two decades and these reforms have spawned a host of questions. What has caused the CAP to reform? How path-breaking are CAP reforms? Are they consistent with founding CAP goals or do they encompass new ideas about agriculture’s place in the economy and society? And what are the consequences of agricultural policy reforms: for European farmers, consumers and taxpayers; for European ‘public goods’ such as environmental sustainability and preservation of rural communities and landscapes; and for third parties outside the EU, including the WTO? This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.

A topical, up-to-date and highly authoritative survey of the highly controversial debate around reform of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy. The book begins with a critical assessment of the 1992 MacSharry reform and the 1994 GATT Uruguay Round. It looks to the likely impact of future reforms on the agricultural economy, on consumers and on the environment, in the light of future EU developments including enlargement and budget constraints and the forthcoming world Trade Organization negotiations of 1999. The postscript highlights the main issues likely to inform the CAP debate into the next millennium.