| The 2003 reform represents a significant shift in the EU policy, particularly in its movement to decoupled support. The potential impact of the reform depends on a range of factors including the modalities of its implementation and the structure of farming sectors in different countries. The then acceding countries had the flexibility to choose to implement the Single Payment Scheme (SPS) or to opt for the simplified Single Area Payment Scheme (SAPS). This paper attempts to provide a comparative overview of the level and distributional aspects of direct payments across seven New Member States (NMS) covering different sub-regions, the Baltics, Central and Eastern Europe, and the two most recent Member States from the Balkans – Bulgaria and Romania. Although... |
