The Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union and Bulgaria : Critiquing the New York Times 2019 Exposé of Corruption in the Common Agricultural Policy

This paper critiques the portrayal of the utilization of CAP funds as forms of corruption in eastern Europe. This study analyzes the CAP from the perspective of its role in supporting European integration as a strategy for peace promotion focusing on post-Communist Europe. This New York Times investigative report illustrates certain biases regarding US politically prevailing normative assumptions regarding political economy. Despite the Trump phenomenon, they underestimate the significance of intense and increasingly salient post-Communist political polarization in Bulgaria and Eastern Europe in general. EU regional and sectoral economic cohesion policies including the CAP are vehicles to incentivize political elite network creation and cooptation to undercut potentials for militant nationalism. The rise of conservative populist nationalism in Europe and globally illustrates the intensified political challenges to peaceful integration and globalization. A consequence includes greater cultural diversification regarding the definition of private versus public interest, i.e., the nature of the state. Analysis of the challenge of corruption in Bulgaria from the CAP point of view provides an opportunity to explore deeply the conceptualization of the state as a control system. The concept of the rule of law and what it means in Bulgaria will be explored from this EU CAP perspective