From Marx to Brussels: agriculture and landscape in twenty-first-century Europe

Abstract

ABSTRACT The transition from Marxism to a Western dominated market economy in Central and Eastern Europe since 1990 has had far-reaching effects on the rural economy and landscapes of the region. This paper examines the impact of the changes. The accession to the European Union in 2005 of eight former Communist states and how they are being integrated into the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is given added relevance for two reasons. First, the CAP is a largely uniform policy trying to cater for the needs of the very varied agricultural industry in twenty-five states across Europe and, thus, in rather a perverse way, it mirrors the attempted uniformity of collectivisation in the former Communist controlled parts of the Continent. Second, the CAP itself is undergoing a radical transformation as politicians attempt to shift the main focus of its activities from production subsidies to a more broadly conceived sustainable rural development strategy and, thus, make the CAP more compatible with the global drive for reduced levels of national protection for agriculture. The paper concludes that for these changes to be managed effectively and sustainably there must be publicly-led regional strategies in place.