You are in > Home > SAC Rural Policy Centre > Rural Policy Centre Publications > Support to Agriculture > Assessment of the impact of partial decoupling (2009)
Featured Topics
- Rural Scotland In Focus Report 2010
-
- Read the report
Related Internet Links
Assessment of the impact of partial decoupling (2009)
In June 2003 the EU Council of Agricultural Ministers agreed radical measures to remove the link between payments to farmers and the level of production. The intention was to move towards a more market-orientated agricultural sector by removing the distorting effects of payments linked to output. Farmers would still receive support in the form of payments under the Single Payment Scheme, provided they adhered to a set of cross-compliance measures. However, the Single Payment Scheme included a significant degree of national discretion in implementation and allowed Member States to retain elements of the former coupled direct payments. This briefing reports recent research that set out to quantify the distortion to competition that partial decoupling has on the affected sectors by comparing production, prices and farm revenues over time.