Slovak agriculture and the integration into the EU

The paper is briefly outlining the expected changes in the economic and financial pre-conditions for Slovak farming during the period after the country's accession to the EU. The starting point of authors reasoning is the current piece of knowledge, saying that the economic performance of individual farms is widely differentiated and the ability of individual farms to meet the future challenges and to use the opportunities is very unevenly distributed among them. Also the competitiveness if a particular agricultural commodity varies. Despite of expectations concerning the price development after accession, not all commodities will be competitive on the single market. The economic situation of farms will considerably benefit from direct payments. Nevertheless, the fact that the Slovak government opted for the Single Area payment Scheme will have some adverse effects on possible gains from payments in productive regions and in farms with high output performance. In order to mitigate these redistribution effects the author is proposing to implement a different scheme of allocation of national top-up is to direct payments. In the final part of his paper the author gives a comprehensive review on payments aimed to promote rural development and payments from the Guidance section of the EAGGF targeted at enhancement of farm re-structuring.