AUSWIRKUNGEN DER EU-OSTERWEITERUNG IM AGRARBEREICH

The East-Enlargement of the EU raises several questions regarding the EU-budget. This holds for both policy areas for which financial transfers are made out of the EU budget; the structural policies and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This paper focuses on the impact of implementing the CAP as specified in the Agenda 2000 in the 10 Central and Eastern European candidate countries. The analysis shows that about 8 Bill. Euro will have to be transferred for the main types of payments out of the EU budget to the new members. The larger part of these financial transfers will be direct payments and not measures for market support. It also becomes evident that these expenditures are quite unequally distributed among the candidate countries if one calculates them per hectare or per person working in agriculture. In addition, in comparison to the EU-15 they are substantially lower. It is rather difficult to say how of the direct payments will remain with the farmer and what share is going to be transferred to the land lessors. Since in some of the candidate countries, leased land holds a large share of total cultivated land this question is important for transfer efficiency. The overall expenditures to be paid from the EU-budget in relation to the CAP are higher than what is shown here since not all types of payments considered in the analysis. This holds for outlays for administrative purposes as well for commodities such as wine, olive oil, fruits, vegetable, tobacco and mutton.