Premium
The New Common Agricultural Policy: Ηow do Member States Respond to Flexibility?
Author(s) -
Henke Roberto,
Benos Theo,
De Filippis Fabrizio,
Giua Mara,
Pierangeli Fabio,
Pupo D'Andrea Maria Rosaria
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
jcms: journal of common market studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.54
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1468-5965
pISSN - 0021-9886
DOI - 10.1111/jcms.12607
Subject(s) - common agricultural policy , member states , flexibility (engineering) , path dependency , direct payments , european union , member state , archetype , political science , economic system , economics , payment , international trade , management , finance , art , literature
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is a core policy of the European Union (EU), representing 40 per cent of the EU budget and a cornerstone of the integration process. Due to the path dependency that defined its evolution, it had always been a rather homogeneous and centralized policy. For the first time, the 2014–20 reform endowed Member States with the possibility to tailor the direct payments of the CAP along different fields of flexibility and thereby better address their national needs. This article examines these national choices in terms of the discontinuity they impose on the centralized policy model, showing that they reduced the policy inertia associated to the historical processes in place at the EU level, along a new national path dependency re‐shaping the CAP implementation. The flexibility introduced by the 2014–20 reform was particularly embraced by Member States that had been penalized by the ‘one‐size‐fits‐all’ historical archetype.