UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF THE COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY IN ACHIEVING SUSTAINABILITY AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT GOALS

Abstract

In view of the forthcoming Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform, it is important to add information on the results of the current CAP in relation to the objectives it tried to achieve so far. The paper endeavors to understand whether in Italy the CAP has reached the stated societal and environmental goals, with emphasis on sustainability and rural development. In order to achieve such aim, we built a set of descriptive statistics using the data set which reports information on the beneficiaries of CAP payments, in accordance with the transparency rules set by Regulation (EU) No 908/2014. The results indicate that CAP interventions in Italy have not been able to achieve all the objectives set by the Ciolos reform for correcting the weaknesses of the previous CAP. First, we found that neither the correction of the excesses of aid to large beneficiaries nor the aid redistribution towards the weaker farmers have been achieved, due to the strong asymmetry in the distribution of direct aid. Second, we found that environmental objectives, received scarce resources. Third, our results also showed the inability of the CAP in supporting small traditional farmers and maintaining a living and healthy economic and social fabric in the rural areas of the country. These results are interesting as regards the debate on the new CAP, which seems not able to overcome the old CAP shortcomings in terms of sustainability and rural development.
Keywords: Common Agricultural Policy, Sustainability, Rural Development.