Romania’s agriculture – a failed transition

Guest writer Stuart Meikle covers the evolution of Romania’s agriculture, which has been in transition for years, just like other countries in the region, and the likelihood of Romania’s success within the common agriculture policy implemented by the EU.

As a young University of London academic I was witness to our team’s creation of agricultural policy units at the Ministries of Agriculture in Warsaw and Sofia. With the end of communism, 26 countries faced the transition from central planning to a free-market economy and they all had significant agricultural sectors that also had to make the transition. In a short space of time, a far too small group of agricultural-policy specialists were tasked to support the transition of rather too many eastern European and former Soviet Union countries. It was an immense task.