The Folly of European Union Policy Transfer: Why the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Does Not Fit Central and Eastern Europe

Gorton M., Hubbard C. and Hubbard L. The folly of European Union policy transfer: why the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) does not fit Central and Eastern Europe, Regional Studies. This paper assesses the appropriateness of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for meeting rural development challenges in the New Member States (NMS). It argues that while the mitigation of structural problems confronting rural areas in these countries is critical to meeting the challenge of effectively integrating Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) into the European Union, the CAP is poorly suited to this task. Overall, the CAP was insufficiently reformed to accommodate CEE accession effectively and it represents a failure of the European Union to adjust adequately from an exclusively Western European institution into an appropriate pan-European organization.