Cap Reform Studies: A Comparison

Since the convening of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), agricultural trade policies have been a prime issue of these negotiations. The European Union (EU) Agricultural Commission responded to the pressures of such focus on agricultural policies as well as to internal budget pressures by submitting the 1992 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform package, a unilateral move by the EU to answer both internal and external concerns. A number of economic studies have examined the 1992 CAP reform package in order to assess its impacts on the EU and world agriculture. This paper summarizes the results of several studies on the effects of the CAP reform plan. First, a brief summation of the CAP reform schedule is given. Next, descriptions of the models used to derive the results and the processes used to obtain comparable figures are explained. The third section provides a comparison of results from these studies covering cereal, oilseeds, livestock, and dairy markets. In the fourth section, the compatibility of CAP reform and the Dunkel proposals is discussed, using information from the studies. In conclusion, an annex contains the original results from the studies.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)