As a consequence of the accession of eastern Germany to the Federal Republic, the structure of german agriculture has changed considerably. It is shown that this has led to a partial modification of the instruments and philosophy of german agricultural policy: the traditional, "socially " oriented structural policy favouring the low-income farms was partly dismantled to the extent that the special support of small farms discriminated against larger farms, there is a new orientation towards structural change and pruductivity. On the other hand, the global income supporting approach that is in favour of quantitative restrictions within the CAP, instead of price liberalisation, has been maintained. Thus the new german agricultural policy improves competitiveness without increasing competition. This may be beneficial to French agriculture.
