CAP History.pdf

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) aims to increase agricultural productivity, ensure a fair standard of living for farmers, stabilise markets, guarantee regular supplies, and provide reasonable prices to consumers. Key objectives include:

Increasing agricultural productivity through technical progress and rational development
Ensuring a fair standard of living for farmers by increasing individual earnings
Stabilising markets and guaranteeing regular supplies
Ensuring reasonable prices for consumers

Initially, the CAP used market management techniques, including:

Variable import levies to protect against low-priced imports
Intervention in the market to remove surplus supply
Releasing intervention stocks back onto the market, destroying them, or exporting them with subsidies

However, problems arose due to:

Improved technology and higher intervention prices leading to prolonged surpluses
Farmers producing according to subsidies rather than consumer demand
High costs to taxpayers for purchasing and disposing of surplus products
* Pressure on the EU and US in international trade negotiations, such as the Uruguay Round.