Subsidies from the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU versus Agricultural Incomes in the European Union Countries in 2005-2015

The purpose of the article was to determine whether there were significant differences in the size of agricultural incomes in farms belonging to the same economic classes between agricultural holdings in the EU-15 and EU-12 countries. The first part of the study discusses the peculiarities of the agricultural sector, especially the need to affect the amount of income earned by this sector. Then the instruments of the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU supporting the value of income in agricultural holdings were pointed out. In the next part of the study we compared the characteristics of average agricultural incomes per farm in EU countries after considering the value of subsidies from the CAP and without them in the years 2005-2015. The last part of the study presents the values of agricultural income per farm including subsidies from the CAP in the EU-12 and EU-15 countries in individual years of the period 2005-2015. For this purpose, EUFADN farm accountancy data were used. It has been shown that CAP subsidies contribute significantly to reducing the income deprivation of EU agriculture. The scale of this impact varies, however, depending on the country. It was also proved that farms with a standard output of up to EUR 25,000 from the EU-15 countries showed higher average income in 2005-2015 than from EU-12 countries. In larger farms in terms of turnover (EUR 25,000 and more) it was the opposite.