Abstract
The agricultural policy of the Western world is very comprehensive and involves considerable transfers to agriculture. This is mainly due to the agricultural objectives which more or less can be found in every industrialised country. The question is then whether these objectives are being fulfilled and whether the right instruments for doing so have been chosen. The fulfilment of these objectives may exactly be an indication of the succes of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). As will appear from this article, some of the objectives of the CAP have been reached long ago whereas the fulfilment of others seems impossible by means of the present instruments.