Abstract
Agriculture, is to date, the economic sector in which the integration of the EU members has gone the farthest. The success of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), is the result of the elaboration of some basic principles aiming to establish a common market. Since the CAP implementation in 1962, the agricultural field has become the one in which the EU has the vastest powers. The CAP is also the most pricy EU policy, as it absorbs 40% of its budget. During the 1990s, the various agricultural crises i.e. the mad-cow disease, the scrapie, the Dioxin Affair, or even water tables pollution, combined with the growing cost of the CAP, have turned the most successful Community policy into the most controversial one. More than fifty years after the Rome treaty, which first raised, although feverishly, the question of a common agriculture, one can wonder why the CAP, originally one of the foundations of European construction, is now having trouble adapting to the new international economic context. In order to know, we will first go through the founding principles of the CAP, as well as the various reforms it has experienced. Then, we will study the CAP's limits, and the challenges it has to face in the future.
