ABSTRACT
The Common Agricultural Policy is the oldest of the integrative policies of the European Community It is also the most bitterly criticised and the most stoutly defended. Its critics regard it as the acme of waste. Its supporters hail it as a resounding success. When European integration was debated in the 1940s there were harsh memories of the famine which was widespread in Europe during and, after the Second World War. The countries of Western Europe were heavily dependent on imports, which were a balance of payments cost and which left them insecure. It was a major policy objective to reach self-sufficiency in food. In the absence of any private responsibility, governments are expected to protect the national heritage of the countryside. Farm support policies have a mix of objectives to serve. To ‘grow more food’, one of the British wartime slogans, some post-war governments protected national agriculture against imports by tariff and non-tariff barriers and by state subsidies.
