Editorial comment

While recent OECD analysis has asserted that agricultural reform will decrease costs and free up budget resources, this is far from the case for the EU. Against this background, EU statements to the effect that the reform process is doing away with the trade distortions traditionally associated with the CAP must be proved empirically rather than simply asserted. The growing volume of public aid deployed in support of agricultural producers in the EU is at the heart of the decline in EU basic agricultural prices and the consequent improvement in the competitiveness of European agricultural and processed agricultural exports.