This guest post is written by Professor Ulrich Koester, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Market Analysis and Policy at the University of Kiel. It originally appeared in German as an opinion piece in the periodical Wirtschaftsdienst 8/2011.
Discussions on the EU medium-term financial framework 2014-2020 are currently taking place in Brussels. Of particular significance are the expenditures for agricultural and fisheries policies. These policies account until now for €58 billion of expenditure or 47.4% of the EU budget. According to the draft proposal this share should reduce to 39% by 2010. It is rather shocking that, at a time when budget resources are scarce, and in light of the poor experiences to date with the current instruments and the results of numerous scientific and internal EU analyses, that it appears that the volume and structure of EU expenditure will not be greatly changed.… Read the rest