ABSTRACT
The transitional period was to be completed by 1970 and was divided into two sub-periods. In the first, lasting from 1958 to 1961, the instruments of agrarian policy were to be identified and perfected. At the end of the 1960s the “problems” of the inefficiency of family farms and the high cost of agrarian policy took central stage. At the international level, Third World countries criticized First World countries’ protectionist agrarian policies, including those of the European Community (EC). This chapter presents a historical description of the fundamental antecedents to the creation of the EC. It provides the reader with a detailed idea of the setting within which the Community developed. The chapter offers a synopsis of how the Community formed and of its institutions and their functions and duties. It also provides the reader to the process of creation and the characteristics of the Common Agricultural Policy adopted within the EC.
