The Common Agricultural Policy. Policy Dynamics in a Changing Context

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?

Contents:

1. Introduction: The Common Agricultural Policy: Continuity and Change Grace Skogstad and Amy Verdun

2. The CAP: Looking Back, Looking Ahead Alison Burrell

3. The Logic of Policy Development: Lessons Learned from Reform and Routine within the CAP 1980 – 2003 Kennet Lynggaard and Peter Nedergaard

4. Ideational Change in the WTO and Its Impacts on EU Agricultural Policy Institutions and the CAP Carsten Daugbjerg and Alan Swinbank

5. Enlargement of the European Union and Agricultural Policy Reform Maria Skovager Jensen, Kim Martin Lind and Henrik Zobbe

6. Domestic Change and EU Compliance: Policy Feedback during Enforcement Gerard Breeman and Pieter Zwaan

7. Environmentally Sustainable Agriculture and Future Developments of the CAP Helle Oersted Nielsen, Anders Branth Pedersen and Tove Christensen

8. Competitive Governance and the Quest for Legitimacy in the EU: The Battle over the Regulation of GMOs since the mid-1990s Yves Tiberghien

9. The GMO Panel: Applications of WTO Law to Trade in Agricultural Biotech Products Gilbert R. Winham