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On joining the EU in 1995 Finland had to adopt its national agricultural policies to follow the principles of the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), its accompanying measures and the environmental legislation of the EU. This led to changes in the national decision making processes, administrative procedures and operational practices. In this paper institutional analysis is used to describe and interpret these changes and the significance of these changes for policy development. The results show that learning is a key for successful policy process.

Cyprus has recently applied for full membership of the European Community (EC). As a member of the Community, Cyprus will experience economic (political) costs and benefits. Examines the static costs and benefits for Cyprus′s national income from the application of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The CAP will cause two types of income transfers between Cyprus and the rest of the EC: transfers through the Community′s budget; and direct income transfers from Cyprus′s consumers to the Community′s producers and vice versa in the form of higher prices. Using data for 1986 and 1987, demonstrates that Cyprus will have positive budgetary gains and net direct income transfers from Cypriot consumers to EC producers. The latter outweigh the former and the total outcome is a loss for Cyprus′s national income.

Within an effort of European Union (EU) policy to achieve carbon-neutral agriculture, the present study intends to explore the impact of carbon emissions generated by different sources related to agriculture namely energy used in farming, by enteric fermentation and by fertilizers on agricultural income in 25 countries from EU.

In order to evaluate the environmental – economic performance linkage for EU agriculture, we employ a couple of different widely used panel unit root tests explicitly Levin, Li and Chu, Im, Pesaran and Shin, ADF and PP Fisher Chi-square test cointegration test (Pedroni and Kao cointegration tests) and model estimation methodologies namely the FMOLS and DOLS and ARDL – PMG models.

All the cointegration techniques employed namely Pedroni, Kao test and Johansen Pesaran cointegration tests validate the existence of long run relationships. The most significant finding is the model estimation based on three different methodologies namely FMOLS, DOLS and ARDL/PMG models. No convergence in the results was found by different estimation models. For the short term coefficients and more specifically for the case of carbon emissions generated by energy the impact on agricultural income seems to be decreasing with a decreasing trend, a result that validates the little effort made by farmers to limit carbon emissions along with the limited efficacy of the implementing policy. The same findings are valid for the first two estimation models while for the case of the third model the reversed relationship is validated. For the carbon emissions generated by enteric fermentation, the inverted-U pattern is validated with DOLS and ARDL/PMG model while for the case of fertilizers only the third model confirms the validity of inverted-U- pattern.

Based on the obtained empirical results, a list of policy implications is unveiled with multiple impacts on the strategy and practices adopted by farmers in order for the objective of eco efficieny to be achieved.

The conducted research is focusing on the environmental – economic performance linkages for EU agriculture and examines the role of agri – environmental policy in the evolution of the particular relationship for different sources of environmental pollution in agricultural activity.

China's Government in 2015 announced its goal of stabilizing the use of fertilizers and pesticide by the year 2020. However, implementation of effective policies is not straightforward, while one may even argue that the policy goal is by far not ambitious enough. Hence, it is useful to look at experiences of other countries that have gone through a similar process. In this paper, the authors explicitly consider the case of European Union's (EU’s) policies aimed at greening agriculture. The choice for the EU is motivated by the fact that the EU is about 35 years ahead of China in implementing a policy agenda to counter the problems China is facing now.

In this paper, the authors focus on agricultural inputs, in particular fertilizer and pesticides, as well as land use and their impact on food safety, air and water quality, soil degradation, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and biodiversity. Policies related to those issues are discussed for both, China and the EU. Given that implementation and monitoring are critical for the success of policies, the authors also discuss how policies are implemented and monitored under different governance and institutional conditions.

From the EU experiences, positive and negative, three central lessons are drawn: (1) China should strive for cross compliance but in two steps. In the first step, arrangements for on-farm monitoring must be made, coupled with a pilot program of cross-compliance conditions for large farms in selected counties; in the second step, cross-compliance requirements must be introduced for all farmers, with additional funds for rural development in vulnerable areas. (2) Strong stakeholder commitment should be sought in the formulation as well as implementation of greening policies. (3) Monitoring of greening results should be harmonized and standardized across the country, with a limited number of indicators.

This paper contributes to the policy discussion by comparing the agricultural greening measures in the EU (which was some 35 years ago in the same situation as China now) with the measures taken in China so far.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of the trading relationship in agricultural goods that the United Kingdom (UK) will have when it leaves the European Union (EU). The decision of the UK to leave the EU has raised many questions, including some on the nature of the trading relationship that the UK will have with the EU and third countries once it leaves the EU.

For agriculture, the UK will need to develop its own agricultural policy as it will no longer be subject to the Common Agricultural Policy and one constraint on the development of that policy will be the Agreement on Agriculture concluded at the end of the Uruguay Round negotiations.

This paper examines the three pillars of that Agreement – market access, domestic support and export competition – to determine the commitments that the UK may make in each pillar and then looks at two other relevant agreements, the SPS Agreement and the TBT Agreement, to complete the discussion of the scope of the UK nascent agricultural policy.

The value of the paper lies in the discussion of the obligations to be assumed by the UK under the Agreement on Agriculture and the contours of UK agricultural policy once it leaves the EU.

The agricultural and fisheries sectors of Spain and Portugal, the new member states of the European Community, are relatively more important than those in the rest of the Common Market, making a greater contribution to production, but needing more in the way of funds from the Common Agricultural Policy. The marketing, trade and policy implications of the Iberian peninsula's accession to the EC are examined, and it is seen that the importance of “Mediterranean” products will increase, and this enlargement is likely to increase the urgency of reform of the Common Agricultural Policy.

The Swedish agricultural landscape has changed dramatically since 1945. Agricultural land has been abandoned and the general trend has been towards less scenic and biological variety. People express a relatively high willingness to pay for preservation of agricultural landscape in contingent valuation surveys and they tend to prefer high degrees of variability. Landscape is shown to be a multidimensional entity with a complex structure of economic characteristics. The complexity makes it unlikely that simple policy solutions are optimal. It is difficult to analyse policy options in this case but much speaks in favour of some differentiated area subsidy for a large fraction of the agricultural land and individual contracts for the most biologically valuable sites.

The literature argues on ambiguous impacts of different types of the common agricultural policy (CAP) subsidies on farm technical efficiency (TE). The purpose of this paper is to estimate and analyse the TE and the impact of the CAP subsidies on the TE of wine farms in Hungary using the farm accountancy data network data set in the period 2013–2019.

The authors use stochastic frontiers analysis (SFA) models to estimate the TE scores for the Hungarian wine farms with four wine farm-level inputs in terms of agricultural land, labour, capital and intermediate consumption. The TE scores are explained by the CAP subsidies and economic wine farm size. The different SFA models were applied with robustness tests to investigate the drivers of the TE values of wineries.

Like for Hungarian farms in general, the distribution of the wine farm structure is a dual with a greater number of smaller wine farms and a smaller number of bigger wine farms. The agricultural land, capital and intermediate consumption are significantly positively associated with the wine farm TE. With higher capital intensity wine farm TE increase. The results imply that the CAP subsidies decrease the TE of the Hungarian wine farms, whereas economic farm size increase.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first specific efficiency studies on the wine sector in the Central and Eastern European region and the first one for Hungary to evaluate the TE at wine farm level and to assess the impact of CAP subsidies and economic farm size on wine farm (in)efficiency to apply production technologies and use farm resources. This study is among the first that applied the fixed-effects stochastic frontier model at the wine farm level to measure the drivers of the TE scores.

The Common Agricultural Policy governing the dairy sector may on first sight give the impression of consisting of a mass of bureaucratic rules creating a system which is the antithesis of the free market. However, although the skeleton of the policy may be bureaucratic its life‐blood is the operation of competitive forces. Actual management of the market is limited to the minimum strictly necessary to achieve current policy aims. Community law itself recognises a number of guarantees to which resort can be made in the case of interference by member states or commercial enterprises with the operation of competitive forces in the dairy sector. Even the Community Council of Ministers has certain legal constraints on its legislative powers such as the requirement to satisfy the principle of proportionality which has been held by the Community Court as being relevant, for example in determining to what extent it is legitimate to affect the competitive position of another agricultural sector by a measure designed to encourage the disposal of surplus milk products. Remaining impediments to free movement of dairy products mean that the single market envisaged by the creation of the common dairy regime more than 20 years ago has not been completely achieved. 1992 is therefore a significant date for the dairy trade. The abolition of the remaining restrictions in Intra‐Community trade and the increasing concentration of the dairy industry are likely to increase the relevance of the Articles of the EEC Treaty dealing with anti‐competitive conduct of enterprises to this sector.

States that the continuing structural disequilibrium in the marketing of milk and milk products is of concern in the EEC. Analyses the complex intervention mechanism established by the commission for this market.