Description
The Common Agricultural Policy is a set of regulations and subsidies in the European Union (EU) that aim to support the farming industry. The policy has been in place for over 50 years, and has been subject to many changes over that time. The main principles of the policy are to support the farming industry, to help farmers overcome market failures, and to ensure fair and equal treatment for all farmers in the EU.
The authors use economics as the main toolkit to explain the Common Agricultural Policy. They explain that the policy is designed to support the farming industry, to help farmers overcome market failures, and to ensure fair and equal treatment for all farmers in the EU.
Most of the recent written material on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is about the details of the day, for example, the views of interested parties on the way milk quotas should be removed or the consequences for the European Union (EU) of different proposals from opposing camps in the international trade negotiations. Surprisingly little is available which attempts to increase understanding of why the policies are as they are, how they attempt to tackle the underlying problems faced in the EU and the degree of success they achieve, and the prospects for change.
Yet knowledge of this process and how it can be applied is precisely the sort of material which students require to gain good understanding of the CAP. The details of agricultural and rural policies have changed and will change many times, and the number of Member States may increase further; yet the principles of policy analysis as applied to the CAP will endure and be of use as details evolve. These principles are the main focus of this book.
The authors use economics as the main toolkit, as fairly simple economics holds the key to understanding many of the fundamental pressures to which agriculture, environmental issues and rural areas are subject. However, to explain the CAP they acknowledge the importance of the political and administrative environment in which CAP decisions to allocate public funds are made. Thus political economy, especially theory of public choice and the behavior of bureaucratic organizations, is also drawn upon.
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