On the 20th June 2008 the European Commission published a report considering and approaching common topics for debate concerning the actual Common Agricultural Policy. The report published offered explanations and the opinion of the Commission with reference to these topics.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is one of the key European Union policies and one of the building blocks on which the EU was built. Much has been said and written about the CAP over the years, some of it true and some of it false. The CAP has been accused of many things and been made the scapegoat for many ills.

Love it or loathe it, the CAP has played a major role in maintaining a vibrant farming sector across the EU, preserving Europe's unique rural heritage, protecting the environment and animal welfare, providing plentiful supplies of food on Europe's plates and bolstering a multi-billion euro agri-food industry.

The popular caricature of the CAP often represents the policy as it was in the 1970s and 1980s and bears no relation at all to the CAP of today. Over the last decade and a half, the CAP has been widely reformed, firstly in 1992, then in 1999 and then in a series of reforms beginning in 2003.

This has completely transformed the CAP into a modern policy, where farmers are more competitive and are free to respond to market signals, where the incentive to overproduce has disappeared, where farm support is contingent on the respect of tough environmental, animal welfare and food quality standards and where coherence with policies for development and trade has greatly increased.

The following points were deemed popular misconceptions, about the CAP, by the Commission. The topics were appraoched and explained by the report:

• The CAP is too expensive.
• The CAP encourages overproduction of unwanted commodities.
• The CAP encourages intensive farming and is bad for the environment.
• Most CAP money goes to people who don't even farm.
• The CAP is to blame for the food crisis.
• The 'neo-liberal' European Commission is dismantling the CAP.
• We need to erect new barriers to imports to guarantee sufficient supplies and protect our farmers.
• The EU is going to extend tobacco subsidies.
• EU policies are causing milk farmers to tip away their milk while the developing world starves.
• The CAP is secretive. No-one knows who gets what money.
• CAP export subsidies destroy farmers' livelihoods in developing countries.
• The EU does nothing for poor countries.
• The CAP is the reason the Doha Round has not succeeded so far.
• The Commission wants to sacrifice the CAP to get a deal in the Doha Round.

Details on the report are available via the European Commission news service website Rapid.