A consideration of the environmental requirements of the latest reform of the European Union Common Agricultural Policy (2014-2020): conflicts, imablances and incosistencies

Abstract

When implementing the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU) and its successive reforms a progressive change in paradigm was perceived ranging from markedly productive approaches to others with a concern for environmental, sustainable and multifunctional concern for rural areas. The CAP’s most recent reform, which will be in force from 2014-2020, clearly aims to ensure farming activity which respects the environment and the climate, although there are some conflicts and imbalances between seeking to achieve a competitive and commercial agriculture and the defence of the public assets associated with those practices. The main objective is to highlight the contradictions, conflicts, inconsistencies and imbalances found in the latest CAP reform relating to its new environmental demands. The reformed CAP has failed to consider the agricultural and forestry specificities proper to the EU’s different farming areas, which explains antagonisms, injustices and territorial, agrarian and socio-economic imbalances among Member States. The most affected countries are in the Mediterranean, especially Spain.