This master thesis uses policy network theory to analyse the legislative process of the adoption of the new EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) package from 2017 to the end of 2021. The aim of the thesis was to analyse the impact of actors in the CAP network on the integration of environmental requirements into the policy, in particular through the example of the livestock sector. Agriculture is a significant contributor to environmental degradation and climate change, and the livestock sector is responsible for more than half of these emissions. The integration of environmental policies into the CAP started in the 1990s, and since 2013 the green component of the CAP has been one of the key focuses of the policy. Despite massive funding and efforts to make the CAP greener, emissions from agriculture in the EU have not been reduced for more than ten years. So why is the EU not taking a more ambitious approach to emissions from agriculture and livestock farming, despite its own climate neutrality targets? I have sought the answer to this question in the CAP public policy network and in the relations between the actors involved in the adoption of agricultural legislation. An analysis of the key actors within the Commission and Parliament shows that the institutions are not interest-neutral. Within the Parliament's Committee on Agriculture sit MEPs who are themselves recipients of CAP funding or are in other ways linked to agriculture. The Commission's Directorate-General for Agriculture has close links with the agricultural lobby group COPA-COGECA. Environmental NGOs, which are vocal opponents of the orientations of the new (environmentally unambitious) CAP, have only marginal influence in the network and the legislative process.
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