Journal of European Integration History - Centre d'études et de ...

How the CAP became
the Green Heart of Europe
Fertile Ground for Europe?
The History of European Integration and
the Common Agricultural Policy since 1945
Edited by Prof. Dr. Kiran Klaus Patel
2009, 302 pp., pb., € 39,00,
ISBN 978-3-8329-4494-0
Bitte bestellen Sie im Buchhandel oder
versandkostenfrei unter www.nomos-shop.de
The Common Agricultural Policy was the
most important policy for the longest duration
of the European Economic Community’s
existence. Apart from subsidizing and
modernizing European agriculture and
securing supplies for its consumers, this
policy was meant to be the beacon of
European integration. However, it also
became the most controversial policy of
the EU – symbolized by subsidized overproduction,
bureaucracy, and burgeoning
farmers’ protests.
This volume provides the first archive-based
assessment of its history in the age of the
Cold War and beyond. Its chapters deal with
the wider context of agricultural integration
since the 1920s; with the basic ideas that
drove this policy; with the negotiations and
controversies that went along with it as well
as with its economic effects and global
impact. Apart from its empirical findings, this
book offers new ways of linking EU history
to larger trends of contemporary history.
The editor of this volume, Kiran Klaus Patel,
is Professor of EU history and transatlantic
relations at the European University Institute
in Florence.