"How to make the direct aid system more effective and simpler; how to adapt to the current world tools that had been originally devised for a community of six states; how to face the new challenges, from climate change to bio-fuels, from the management of water resources to the protection of biodiversity". These are the three major spheres against which to measure the "health" of the CAP, the Common Agricultural Policy. The European Commission means to "make the EU agricultural industry more efficient and modern" and, to do this, it launches discussions that will last six months and should eventually promote some reforms to "face the new challenges and the opportunities that are offered to a 27-state EU". "Next spring explains the Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel , the EU Commission will submit its bills", hoping they will be adopted by the ministers concerned before the end of 2008 and "they will be enforced straightaway". From such "adjustment of the 2003 reforms", which also includes a review of the relevant budget, the Commissioner intends to "understand whether the CAP should be rescheduled" for the extended EU and "for a rapidly-changing world".
