• Community Agricultural Policy (CAP), that will soon celebrate its half-century anniversary, is being now forced to reconsider the whole of its content, and after a long run it is now fronted to a scene of important changes.
• Along last four decades, CAP has proven its efficiency to encourage offer and increasing productivity. But it is also true that CAP designed and applied like this, has been far from getting other proposed goals causing, at the same time, deep internal as well as external distortions.
• CAP has always undergone a permanent reform process with the common denominator of surplus reduction as a means to limit subsidized exports and CAP’s financial expenses, keeping a sufficient number of farmers in rural areas, and agrarian incomes support.
• The European Union will have to assimilate the impact of the fifth extension that means to incorporate four million farmers that will inevitably be “budget consumers”, with all the financial importance that this involves; Community farmers will have to accept counting with new partners that are costumers as well as rivals.

Summary

All documents are in Adobe Acrobat format (PDF).
To view a document in PDF format you need the Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you don’t have it already loaded on your computer, you can donwload it now.