The Slovak Republic was among ten new members

then it has witnessed how EU accession has influ-enced many aspects of life in the country and still continues to do so. The European Union accession specifically influences agriculture because agricultural sector has traditionally been strongly regulated by the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP). Almost half of the EU budget is spent on agriculture. The EU accession involves both changes in agri-cultural support level as well as support instruments used. Most prices in Slovakia were below the EU level prior to the EU accession but the gap was closing in the recent years. Direct payments in Slovakia are higher within the EU than they were before the ac-cession. Price support and direct payments are two major policy instruments of the CAP. Direct payments adopted by Slovakia and other accessing states are significantly decoupled, detached from production (Pokrivčák, Ciaian 2005). The CAP went through significant reforms since early 1990s, reducing price support and replacing it with the decoupled income support. Since 1960s till 1990s, price support was a major instrument used to support the EU agriculture. Domestic prices were usually set above the world prices while tariffs were imposed in order to avoid imports of cheap prod-ucts to the common market from abroad. In com-modities in which the EC/EU produced more than the domestic consumption level, export subsidies were used to eliminate surpluses. Reforms started in 1992 (MacSharry reform) and continued through the Agenda 2000. The last reform round took part within the Mid Term Review (MTR) of the CAP in 2003. The nature of these reforms was to replace the distortive price support with income support. That The evaluation of effects of the subsidy system on Slovak farms in different regions in the pre- and post-EU accession stage Komparácia bežných priznaných podpôr poľnohospodárskych podnikov hospodáriacich v rôznych výrobných podmienkach pred a po vstupe do E