ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a description of the development of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), its objectives, and the instruments which are applied in the pursuit of these objectives. It describes a projection from the situation to identify the likely future pressures on the CAP. The introduction of the CAP required agreement on the type of instrument and the level of support. The legal expression of the CAP consists of regulations, directives and decisions. The intention in the original CAP design was to have a uniform set of threshold and intervention prices throughout the Community for a particular product. The regulations of the CAP have been continually refined and adapted to cope with changing circumstances during the 1970s. The most widely criticised aspect of the CAP is the production of surpluses. Transfers between member states as a result of the CAP occur because of the particular structure of the economies of the members.
