The health check is over

The health check is now well and truly over so the CAP Health Check blog has been replaced by a new and more attractively designed site at Subsidies

They also have a film on You Tube about the work of their site: You Tube . This is interesting and well-made.

I suppose my view would be that if you are going to have subsidies, one has to be careful about cutting them off from large farmers who are arguably more efficient and certainly more internationally competitive. Of course, 'efficiency' is a contested concept and does not take account of negative environmental externalities, but what that implies is a proper Pillar 2 in the CAP and a new Pillar 3 to deal with climate change (or at least a substantial climate change dimension to Pillar 2).