ABSTRACT
Introduction Industrial trade liberalisation excepted, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was the first common policy adopted by the EU. For a long time it remained the only significant common policy and consumed a good two-thirds of the EU budget. Even today it accounts for roughly half of the Union’s expenditure and there are few policy areas where the EU’s competences are as extensive as in agriculture. The agricultural ministers meet more often in Brussels than any other ministers except foreign ministers and spend more time there than any others: the ‘marathon’ meetings of the Agricultural Council, which may extend over several days and nights and in which the participants negotiate themselves to exhaustion over the annual farm prices, have long since become a part of the reality and image of the EU.
