Simplification and Better Regulation in EU’s Agricultural Policy

Abstract

There is existing evidence on the importance of good governance for economic development. Good governance is not subject to universal agreement as it involves value judgment. Six indicators based on the World Bank’s data set are, however, widely used. Among these indicatiors - voice and accountability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, control of corruption, rule of law, and political stability - this paper focuses on Regulatory quality that is the ability of the government (EU) to formulate and implement sound policies – such as sound agricultural policy - and regulations that permit and promote private sector development and internalization of externalities. From the regulation point of view a general governance challenge for agricultural and rural development policy is the fact that agriculture is subject to a variety of market failures (environmental externalities, income disparities, structural peculiarities, research and development) and thus e.g. to the question: who is responsible for providing and paying public goods (A key aspect in the multifunctional European agricultural model). While trying to solve the high number of problems having emerged over time, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) became more and more complex in both the 1. – market policy - and the 2. - rural development - pillar. This complexity has reached such a high level at which simplification is required so that better regulation at local, national, regional and EU level can be guaranteed. The aim of the paper is to focus on the assessment and systematization of different simplification approaches regarding the two pillars of the CAP and the comparison of interests and needs of different stakeholders. A review is made on the ways in which simplification results in better regulation. The analysis of documents and the literature helps me to describe the processes and expected results of the simplification. Besides by means of qualitative analysis future prospects and tendencies are to be foreshown.