The CAP: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Abstract

This paper offers a brief overview of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) from its origins until the present day in order to identify the factors that have been shaping its evolution. It then attempts to evaluate how persistent these trends will be in the future, whether new policy imperatives are gaining relevance in CAP reform and what they imply for the CAP over the coming years. Budget crises, international trade pressures and enlargement have driven the CAP reforms of the last fifteen years. In the future, change will be driven by the need to maintain the economic rationality and political acceptability of agricultural policy in an enlarged European Union of twenty‐seven heterogeneous member states. Further decentralization of decision making and financing can be expected.