The Common Agricultural Policy v. Turkish Admission to the EU

The working hypothesis proposed in this study is that perhaps financial fallout was the real reason that the European Union (EU) repeatedly rebuffed Turkish applications for membership: More specifically, given the tariffs and subsidies emanating from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and given that Turkey is a regional superstar in agricultural production export, admitting Turkey into the EU would certainly threaten, pardon the pun, to upset the “financial applecart” of the EU. It remains for future research to quantify the importance of the analysis presented in this paper.