ABSTRACT
An analysis of the Europeanization experience of Malta’s agricultural sector constitutes an interesting case study of Malta’s adaptive experience to EU membership because a significant proportion of the acquis deals with agriculture and this means that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) constituted a formidable challenge for Malta’s Public Administration, even simply in terms of having to establish the degree of mismatch between it and Malta’s relatively static agricultural policies. Also, as the Union’s principal distributive policy for much of its history, the administration and auditing of CAP funds has always represented a key challenge for the Union. In Malta, the bulk of EU agricultural funds were to be administered from outside the highly centralised core structures within the OPM (and after 2013 the Ministry for European Affairs) and this arrangement was to prove a failure with problems in the administration of agriculture funds in Malta in the initial years of membership.
