Brussels, 02/04/2001 (Agence Europe) - According to a report adopted on Friday by the European Commission, the changeover to the euro in Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) took place "harmoniously" and did not cause any major problems requiring rapid action on the part of the authorities. The analysis on the implementation of transitional measures for the introduction of the euro into CAP (measures that come under the provisions of a regulation dated 24 December 1998 on the agrimonetary regime, which has existed since the late sixties), reveals that this transition by the agricultural sector to single currency is simplification due to the very existence of the euro and that the incomes of European farmers have not been affected by this radical change towards a more integrated European Union.
Thus, farmers have been able to take advantage of this new agrimonetary regime established to facilitate transition to the euro. The regime consists on one hand of compensatory measures to counter the effects of the euro on institutional prices and, on the other, in subsidies to counterbalance the fall in rate applied to direct aid. Even if the effects of this regime on agricultural income are very difficult to estimate (they mainly depend on the incidence of the rate of conversion on market prices and the payment times for purchases, sales and direct aid), the Commission notes an increase in the gross added value of EUR 311.7 million in 1999. This positive impact is practically generalised in all Member States except for Italy, Finland and France.