The Common Agricultural Policy (PAC)

Résumé du document

First and foremost, the CAP was conceived as the first common policies, it should be the harbinger intervention other common policies whose definition was deemed desirable. A common belief animated the two political currents. Europe should be equipped with all supranational powers to integrate Member States in a number of senior able to unite under his authority. The objective was twofold, political and economic: avoid devastating war as total return as the two world wars that marked the 20th century, and improve the effectiveness of economic regulations by developing and managing them at a level appropriate to the expansion of modern accumulation process.

Extraits

[...] On the other hand, the financing of the common agricultural policy depends, like all EU policies, with a maximum budget for a period of seven years. This budget ceiling on spending and allows farmers to know in advance what the available funds are. Successive reforms have improved the effectiveness of existing tools: the least effective were gradually replaced with more suitable instruments that allow the CAP to better meet the needs of farmers and the requirements and needs of consumers. [...]

[...] The prerogatives of national auditors, independent agencies that deliver agricultural support, in particular should be extended. As a result, the new EU agricultural policy should meet the various reports released in recent months by the Court of Auditors critical of the management of CAP funds. Lastly, a topical subject, the common agricultural policy for 2014-2020 presented by the European Commission raised many reactions: to begin, Simplifying the CAP is an ambitious project as agricultural and rural development policies are by nature complex. [...]

[...] The purpose of this reform was also to reduce the budget of this costly policy, while new needs were felt in terms of structural funds, following the 1981 enlargement to Greece and 1986 in Spain and Portugal. Finally, payments to farmers constitute the majority of CAP spending (over 70%). While about 20% of the budget relates to rural development measures. The remaining money is distributed to food companies in the form of export subsidies. According to the Commission, it costs about 30 cents per citizen per day. [...]

[...] Critiques To begin, a fundamental problem: a doubt exists about the truth of the governments of 27 to implement a true comprehensive reform of the CAP so that it more responsive to the problems of rural development and can thus regain a contested legitimacy for several decades. Furthermore, the interests of Member States, key decision makers of the CAP to the Lisbon Treaty, are divergent. At 27, the positions on the CAP range from full support to the utmost hostility. Some countries, oriented free market in all areas, reluctantly enrolled in a regulatory cap and have been constantly changing. Many states are torn between the CAP and of other more consistent policies or guidelines to their own interests. [...]

[...] Secondly, a more specific problem: you can't trust the member states of the European Union for distributing agricultural aid. This, in short, the conclusion of the report of the Court of Auditors responsible for monitoring the financial management of the Union. Between farm subsidies that are paid to beneficiaries who are not farmers and those who subsidize land left fallow, there is cause for alarm. In France, the eligibility of control procedures for grants are judged "ineffective". Some payments were made even before the end of compulsory controls. [...]