Decoupling Agricultural Competitiveness of the Lagging regions and Cohesion in the EU 15

Abstract: The objective of the paper is finalized to understand the level of cohesion between EU regions (at level of NUTS2) and which will be the effects of decoupling introduced by CAP reform on land allocation, farm income and, in turn, on social cohesion for EU regions. The study is conducted adopting three different methodologies integrated between them: Multivariate Statistical Analysis (MSA), Positive Mathematical Programming (PMP) and Convergence Analysis Methodology (CAM). This combination of different set of methodologies allow to provide different type of analysis useful to understand the social and the economic characteristics of each EU region, the effect of the reform, the path that each EU region will adopt and, indeed, the implication respect the Cohesion across EU