A report from the European Commission - Directorate-General for Agriculture

This report summarises the main results of medium-term projections for some key agricultural products in the current (in a non-enlargement scenario) and enlarged European Union for the period 2003-2010. It also aims at presenting the main findings of an impact analysis of the reform of the CAP adopted in June 2003 on EU agricultural markets and income.

According to the report, the medium-term perspectives for the EU cereals, meat and dairy markets appear relatively favourable. In the cereal markets, the growth in domestic uses and exports would absorb the moderate expansion in cereal availability, whereas the overall market balance in the rice sector would display a swift improvement. The current situation in the beef market - where consumption is higher than domestic production - is expected to persist over the 2004-2010 period. The other meat markets are projected to recover over the medium term from the current difficulties. The EU dairy sector is also foreseen to display a gradual improvement after the current short-term imbalance, with increasing cheese production and consumption and, at the same time, lower availability of butter and skimmed milk powder.

In spite of all the positive achievements in the preparation for EU membership, a considerable task of restructuring of the agricultural and food industries, most notably in animal production, remains to be pursued in the new Member States in order to increase competitiveness on the Single Market. The medium-term outlook suggests that the production potential will be gradually exploited and only fully used in the longer term. The medium-term perspectives for the agricultural sector in the new Member States appear very positive with higher efficiency and a 35 % rise in income against 2002.

The implementation of the CAP reform will help improving the market balance of most commodity markets (most notably cereals, rice, meat and dairy products) whereas the overall income of the agricultural sector would be little affected.

The full report in PDF format (777KB) is at http://europa.eu.int/comm/agriculture/publi/caprep/prospects2003b/fullrep.pdf