Reforma da PAC para o Período 2014-2020: uma aposta no desenvolvimento territorial

This work aims to analyse the main changes introduced by the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform, passed at the end of 2013 by the European Parliament, coming into effect from 2014 to 2020. According to the reform, the CAP will have a lower budget than the years before and three more countries (now, after the entry of Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia, 28 countries are members). In addition to a 12% lower budget per value, it should be noticed a significant change of the general policy orientation: from a sectoral to a territorial priority. Actually, the hypothesis is that we are in the face of a reform that represents a transit from a sectoral-based policy, addressed to the agrarian sector’s productive management with direct assistance, which leads the most scathing criticisms, to a territorial-based policy, oriented to rural area management, which tries to enable rural development processes and remunerate the farmers for the public goods production. Therefore, besides evaluating the importance of having a CAP for Europe, though it does not satisfy most of the farmers anymore, but it attends part of demands of others social segments, and even of the international pressure, the purpose is to analyse the elements of the reform in a perspective that goes beyond specific aspects. In other words, the purpose is to trace the lines where it produces the transit of a policy less guided to the sector and more to the territory.