Real progress is now being made towards reform of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is one of the EU’s oldest and most important policy instruments, making up around 40 per cent of the EU budget. Wyn Grant writes that the most recent round of proposed reforms to the CAP focus on giving member states more scope to follow their own policies: making the policy less ‘common’. But, he writes, there are still barriers to reforms which are based around disputes over what the CAP actually is – a social policy, or a way of making EU agriculture more competitive.