An extended guest post by Jorge Núñez Ferrer , takes a close look at the leaked commission communication on the future of the CAP. Dr Núñez Ferrer (pictured, right) is Associate Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies and has written widely on the CAP and the EU budget
The CAP 2020 reform philosophy has finally seen the light, albeit only in leaked form. A carefully drafted document contains the usual CAP rhetoric punctuated by some apparently strong deviations from past doctrine. But once the objectives and policy proposals are reduced to their basic components, much of the fizz disappears.
Looking beyond the politically correct drafting and generalisations (and the inevitable linguistic awkwardness of an English text primitively translated from the French of the original draft), one finds the following objectives and reasoning as the guiding principles and motives:
The CAP should ensure that agricultural production across the whole European Union is maintained and even enhanced.… Read the rest