Reforms Of The Common Agricultural Policy - From Ensuring Food Security To Rural Development

The article is a challenge in trying to capture the changes that the Common Agricultural Policy has undergone throughout its existence, the successive restructuring caused by the changing European reality, the need to ensure the Community's food security, competitive pricing policy and the importance of the growing role of rural development in both the CAP and other European Union policies, interconnected to ensure sustainable rural development. Thus, this article makes the transition from the theoretical-methodological aspects of rural development to the reality of this development, as designed jointly (in a unitary way) by the countries that were from the beginning members of this organization. It will present, in a summarized form, the conception and pragmatism of the European Union in the issue of rural development, considered as an inseparable part of the broad process of sustainable development. Based on this premise, important aspects will be reflected, such as: the characteristics of the European rural area, the content and evolution of the common agricultural policy, the new CAP reform which expands its scope and introduces the concept of common rural development, the diversity of rural areas in the countries of the European Union, the European model of agriculture, the transformations that have taken place in the financing mechanisms of agriculture and rural development.