The European Commission presented to the Council in March 1998 the legislative proposals necessary for strengthening the pre-accession strategy for the ten central and eastern European applicant countries. An agreement with Poland on farm trade liberalisation was reached after 18 months of negotiations in September 2000 and will enter into force early in 2001. Under the Europe Agreements, trade in agricultural goods is to be gradually liberalised, based on mutual tariff concessions. Agricultural pre-accession aid is to help the CEEC applicants transform and modernise their agricultural sector and rural regions in order to enable them to adopt the CAP acquis on the day of accession.
Agriculture is seen as a particularly sensitive and problematic sector.
The sensitivity of agriculture in the enlargement process stems from the relative size of the agricultural sector in some of the CEEC and from the substantial agricultural production potential that the CEEC would add to the Union. The accession of the CEEC would, therefore, add far more to the EU's agricultural output than to its national product. As a result, the common agricultural markets and policies would encounter severe strain. Moreover, the agricultural sector in the CEEC has gone through a fundamental transition and restructuring process over the years that led to a fall in output. It seems reasonable to assume that the CEEC will recover at least part of this lost output before accession as market-based rural economies take hold and Western production technologies are adopted.