2nd pillar of the Common Agricultural Policy and regionalization : towards more cohesion ?

The 1st pillar of the Common Agricultural Policy seems to contradict the European objective of cohesion. Is the 2nd pillar (the "rural development") about the regionalization of agricultural policies, as some European sources imply, meeting this aim? Our statistical study is based on original data of regional subsidies in 56 European regions. The analysis also encompasses regional agricultural subsidies which are not co-financed by EU or member states, as well as qualitative variables. The intraregional dimension of cohesion too is taken into account, that is the distribution of the subsidies of the regions inside their own space. Thus, we show that the distribution of subsidies of the 2nd pillar does not clearly meet the objective of interregional cohesion and is even opposing it. Regionalization tends to reinforce this contradiction, without meeting the goal of infraregional cohesion.