Fertile Ground for Europe? The History of European Integration and the Common Agricultural Policy Since 1945

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.