Europe should continue to support the agricultural sector, but in a way consistent with the aims you outline above. They should cap the subsidies at a certain size of farm. They should insist on a move towards sustainable farming. They should insist on ethical, respectful and sustainable treatment of animals. They should stop subsiding industries - like sugar - which make no economic sense without the subsidies. And, on a slightly unrelated rant, if we're paying for the countryside they should insist that hikers have access to it.
If the aim is to maintain a population in rural Europe with a sensible standard of living it would probably be cheaper to simply pay them all money directly.
Don't get me wrong though: the free-market morons can take a running leap.
that's why I favour the rights of African and Third World states to impose tariff barriers to prevent the dumping of both agricultural and industrial products.
But it IS, for political reasons, one of the political foundations of the EU and the UK's insistence to dismantle it is also seen as yet another attempt to break whatever political institutions exist at the EU level, to replace with nothing. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
This was when Blair and Chirac really feel out ( the Iraq war sealed the deal on their new found mutual antipathy ).
I have never felt that the UK wants to destroy European institutions. I am not sure where people on the continent get this idea. Money is a sign of Poverty - Culture Saying
The CAP needs reforming, not busting.
