Regional and international trade policy : lessons for the EU accession in the rural sector : World Bank/FAO workshop, June 20-23, 1998

With appropriate preparation and policies, the enlargement of the European Union (EU) will result in a broader and higher-level integration of European agriculture, create an environment more conducive to further liberalization of global agricultural trade, and lead to further opening of European markets. As part of the World Bank's Strategic Compact Initiative, the Bank has coordinated activities to help the ten EU accession countries achieve EU membership. These activities include the preparation of studies to facilitate implementation of necessary reforms and sponsoring seminars and workshops to disseminate and analyze the results. This volume presents the major papers and summaries of one of the Workshop deliberations. This volume includes the following topics: lessons learned from other regional agricultural trade agreements the evolution of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) an analysis of the economic impact of trade flows the harmonization of agricultural policies within trade agreements the implications of the external trade environment for the accession countries the role of sanitary and phytosanitary trade rule in EU accession quantifying the incentive and farm income effects of agricultural support policies in transition economies major challenges to agricultural input regulation and trade during transition and EU accession concluding comments by the World Bank.