EU Cohesion Policy and CAP. A Review of the Current Debate

Cohesion Policy and Common Agricultural Policy are the most highly financed policies within the EU Budget and the most decisive in terms of the territorial distribution of the resources. Although they are extremely interdependent in terms of design and implementation, they are not taken as such in the evaluation stage. This essay highlights how ignoring the interdependence of these policies leads to partial and counterintuitive results at the level of their structure and impact. In particular, policy interaction and synergies risk being left out from the debate even though they constitute core aspects of the whole European strategy (Europe 2020).