ABSTRACT
The agricultural policy of the EC has been the subject of numerous investigations which have underscored its successes and failures or, to use the jargon of economists, its benefits and costs. For the most part, these are incomplete analyses, since the characteristics and the effects of policies for agriculture are examined without considering the economic context within which they are generated. Furthermore, they assume implicitly the existence of a strong cause-effect relationship between agrarian policies and changes in the agricultural sector.
