Integrating the Environment into CAP Reform

The aim of the project is: - to assist the British countryside agencies to develop a new model for rural support measures to maximise the environmental benefits of agricultural policy reforms; - to identify the best means of promoting the ideas, with a view to influencing the debate over Agenda 2000 and longer term CAP reform and making links to wider rural policy. The starting point for the work is the agencies' response to the European Commission's Agenda 2000 draft Regulations (CEC, 1998). That response, while welcoming certain progressive elements, expressed grave disquiet at "the continuing imbalance in the budget in favour of the market regimes" (para 11.1). The agencies thus are looking beyond Agenda 2000 to seek more fundamental reform towards “a more sustainable multi-functional model of rural policy” (para 4.1). This is the focus of the second section of our report. Meanwhile, the agencies are seeking to build upon the progressive elements in Agenda 2000 and have proposed that "the UK must maximise new opportunities to adapt measures to a wider range of 'public good' objectives, including protection of the environment and enhancement of