Common Agricultural Policy

The CAP is a set of regulations by which members states of the European
Community (EC) seek to merge their individual agricultural programs into a
unified effort to promote regional agricultural development, fair and
rising standards of living for the farm population, stable agricultural
markets, increased agricultural productivity, and methods of dealing with
food supply security. Two of the principal elements of the CAP are the
variable levy (an import duty amounting to the difference between EC target
farm prices and the lowest available market prices of imported agricultural
commodities) and export restitutions, or subsidies, to promote exports of
farm goods that cannot be sold within the EC at the target prices.