EU AGRICULTURAL POLICY: AN EASY TARGET FOR CRITICISM OR INSTRUMENT WORTH COMPLIMENT?

Abstract

The Agricultural Policy of the EU has been proceeding to be one of the mostly debatable areas of the Union since the foundation of the Common Agricultural Policy in the 1960s. Various standpoints exist concerning this controversial policy. Division of individuals into either the exponents or the opponents of this sectoral regulation can arguably be contingent on their relation to it. Opposing perspectives on the same topic draws attention to ascertain in what respects and whether the CAP may be considered an integral part of the EU or to the detriment of the Union, which is in turn also the focal question of this work. This paper seeks to address the conflicting attitudes related to the EU Agriculture Policy and to examine to what extent this legal instrument deserves to be condemned or commended. At the beginning of the main part, the paper gives information about the historical establishment of the Common Agricultural Policy, whilst calling into a question its role in the European internal market and the level of its influence over the process of the accession of a new Member State into the Union. Moreover, this chapter is also a review of the different actors involved in this procedure and these consist of each EU institution. The next chapter provides a succinct description of the specific pros and cons of this policy. The variety of disputable perspectives together with the subsequent reforms will be highlighted there. In addition, these analyses are extended in the following two sub-chapters, where the former concentrates on relatively broad beneficial properties of the CAP along with its pivotal involvement in stable availability as well as abundant range of food products in the EU shelves and incentives provided by it for the preservation of environment and farming. By contrast, criticism of the CAP arisen from the huge expenditure from the EU budget on it that imposes a burden on the taxpayers, the emergence of food products in excess and destructive impact of intensive farming on the environment are present in the latter sub-chapter. Finally, after the contemplation and elaboration on the merits and drawbacks of the CAP, the last chapter of the paper attempts to offer conclusive speculation with respect to whether the importance of this policy can be justified. The aim of this paper is hence to determine the relevance of this policy to the prosperity of the EU by the method of evaluating both of its pros and contras.