Reforms of EU redistributive policies: the role of Enlargement ; ES perskirstomųjų politikų reformos: ES plėtros veiksnio vaidmuo

Abstract

Then the process of Enlargement has started, it was expected that Accession of much more agrarian and less developed countries from Eastern and Central Europe, compared to the Member States at that time, should encourage the radical reforms of the EU redistributive policies – Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and Cohesion Policy. Some researchers provided with numbers proving that Enlargement without reforming the EU redistributive policies would substantially increase the funding for implementation of these policies. While the other group of scientists noticed that the Enlargement process is getting momentum, whereas the internal EU reforms are postponing. The decision on the CAP reform was taken in 2003 by the Agricultural Council, while the Cohesion Policy reform was agreed in the Brussels European Council of 2005. In the Commission's reform proposals as well as during Member States' negotiations much attention was paid, especially in the case of the Cohesion Policy reform, to the challenges of Enlargement. In this paper the aforementioned last reforms of the EU redistributive policies are analysed: the CAP reform of 2002–2003 and the Cohesion Policy reform of 2004–2006 aiming to evaluate the impact of Enlargement on the Commission's reform proposals and the reform results. It is argued that the factor of Enlargement, although in the Commission's reform proposals was emphasised as encouraging to reform the CAP and the Cohesion Policy radically, in reality for the EU redistributive policy reforms had a minor impact. It is shown that Enlargement did not encourage radical reforms of the EU redistributive policies, because higher influence on the reform results was made by the financial interests of the Member States.