The paper analyses the trade relationships among EU- 15 members and some emerging partners: the NMS, Turkey and China. The EU enlargement to 10 countries has modified quite remarkably the features of agri-food trade in Europe. Some of the NMS, such as Poland, Hungary and the Check Republic,...

The recent CAP has increasingly supported the process of farm diversification throughout a set of measures aimed at enhancing alternative forms of incomes. The paper focuses on evaluating to what extent the diversification strategy enhanced the economic sustainability of different typologies of...

Member States acknowledge the multifunctional role of the primary sector; however each of them emphasises specific functions according to its own model of agriculture and rural development. As a result, the CAP and the demand of citizens addressing a new role of the primary sector in...

The paper focuses on the implementation of direct aids modulation, as provided for by Regulation 1259/99. After a critical review of the most relevant questions arisen around the effectiveness and the viability of modulation, the paper presents results about its possible application in Italy. In...

The main objective of the paper is to trace the composition of the CAP support for Italian farms at the eve of the implementation of the CAP reform. The paper is based on three regional case studies, that represent as many farming specialisation typologies: Veneto, in the North-East, where...

The set of policy tools that the EU puts under the heading of Rural Development is extremely heterogeneous, such heterogeneity translates into a different degree of coupling support with agriculture production and also brings out the need to discuss the actual consistency of such tools with the...

Direct payments have progressively become the largest and most visible form of support in the CAP tool-box. Analyses on direct payments have always highlighted a large inequality in their distribution, both between Member States and, within them, among farmers and territories where, on one side,...

One of the main objectives of the 2003 CAP reform was that to enhance farm competitiveness and make farmers able to catch market signals and adjust their production level and specialization accordingly. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the effects of decoupling in Italy COP sector comparing...

The paper analyses the effects of greening measures on farm income in Italy focusing on two specialised farming systems that will be largely affected by the introduction of green payments: the maize production system, localized mainly in Northern regions, and the durum wheat production system,...