The CAP's Transition to a Single Fund: Legal and Institutional Consequences

BackgroundThe 2025 Commission package (COM[2025] 565 and COM[2025] 560) proposes a Single Fund (PNRF) for 2028–2034, merging CAP resources with other EU instruments and ending the traditional dual-pillar system. This raises fundamental questions on compliance with Articles 38–44 TFEU, the preservation of CAP's functional autonomy, and the resilience of budgetary safeguards. Material and methodsThe article adopts a legal-dogmatic and comparative approach. It analyses EU primary law, the 2023–2027 CAP framework (Regulations 2021/2115–2117), and the Commission's 2025 proposals (COM[2025] 565, 560, 550, 545). Parliamentary and Council materials, Member State positions, and stakeholders' documents (e.g. CEJA, Copa-Cogeca) are reviewed. Given the scarcity of post-2027 academic literature, this work provides one of the first systematic legal-institutional assessments of the Single Fund. ResultsThe analysis identifies tensions between simplification and integration, on the one hand, and the CAP's legal “speciality” on the other. Formal safeguards (ring-fenced agricultural envelopes, accounting separation, performance monitoring) exist, but doubts remain about their durability in times of budgetary stress. Some stakeholders see the PNRF as risking “silent renationalisation”, while others interpret it as subsidiarity in action, offering Member States flexibility to adapt interventions and overcome CAP's compartmentalisation. ConclusionsThe reform is not merely technical but constitutional in impact. Its success depends on balancing innovation with continuity: only robust safeguards can ensure that the Single Fund preserves the CAP's identity as a genuine common policy. Implemented with transparency and legal certainty, it could modernise agricultural governance; without such guarantees, it risks eroding the CAP's distinctiveness and weakening its role in food security and sustainable rural development.