La nuova politica agricola comunitaria tra multifunzionalità e territorio

Abstract

The new common agricultural policy (CAP) represents a turning point in the way in which both the primary sector and rural areas are supported: on one hand market policies CAP’s so called first pillar become more and more a form of income support conditional on farmers’ behaviours; on the other hand, rural development establishes itself as a second pillar of agricultural policies by focusing increasingly on the support of agriculture’s secondary functions and the diversification of rural areas. In this paper we analyse the main strengths and weaknesses of the new CAP with particular attention to two aspects: its interior coherence, with respect to the financial equilibrium between the pillars representing its core structure, and its external coherence, that is CAP’s relationship with policies of cohesion and the structural intervention of the European Union.