The CAP (Common Agricultural Policy): A Short History of Crises and Major Transformations of European Agriculture

The purpose of this article is to study the development of EU agricultural policies from a historical reconstruction perspective. The 1957 Treaty of Rome, the basis of today’s European Union, gave birth to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in order to coordinate production across different European countries, to ensure food self-sufficiency and the certainty of supply to member states. Over time, several choices, as well as certain subsidies and policies (e.g. milk quotas) have been called into question as part of the liberalisation of the common agricultural market. Others persist, but continue to favour the unequal management of funds in favour of large companies specialised in intensive agriculture and livestock farming. These choices represent a loss in terms of both biodiversity and traditional farming knowledge and know-how. The decisive changes of the CAP at the institutional level have transformed the socio-economic as well as geographical landscape of Europe. It should be added that with the current crises—the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the ecological crises—the entire model is being called into question. Consequently, this article, after providing a brief overview, aims to reconstruct the common agricultural policies. It then provides an explanatory framework in quantitative terms of the French and Italian agricultural sectors to highlight what are, in the authors’ opinion, the limits of the CAP, even in the face of the crises mentioned above.