Evaluating the Impact of Agricultural Subsidies in the UK and the EU after Brexit

Bc. Saumyadeep Parida, BSc

Master's thesis

Abstract:

The research analyses the dynamic case of the agricultural subsidy in the United Kingdom and the European Union following Brexit in respect to the economic, environmental, social and trade related issues. With the assistance of the Agriculture Act 2020 and the Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMS) that transformed the support to be based on the principle of public money, as the method of the provision of the good, a significant policy divergence was created as the UK left the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and became a part of the new principle. The research design is qualitative secondary research whereby the policy documents, scholarly literature, institutional reports and farm statistics will be analyzed to evaluate the effects of subsidy reforms in terms of the farm income, productivity, environmental sustainability, and food security. Comparative analysis reveals that, although EU is still concerned with optimization of CAP on improved environmental conditions, UK is faced with transitional ambiguities, incomes disparity among the types of farms and ineffective execution in the new environmental plans. These findings also suggest that the various sectors which have low-margin grazing and cereal farms are vulnerable to the effects with market-oriented enterprises being the ones more adaptively adjusted. There are also other factors that lead to trade tensions, differences in regulations and structural needs in the lives of the rural population (in the study). Overall, the paper has indicated that, there are opportunities and threats that the post Brexit subsidy reform has and that there must be a moderate approach of balancing the economic sustainability, the environmental goals and the long-term sustainability of agriculture in the UK and the EU as a result of the balanced approach to policy.

Keywords

Brexit, Agricultural subsidies, Common Agricultural Policy, economic impact assessment, UK-EU agricultural policy

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 4. 4. 2026

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 3. 6. 2026
• Supervisor: JUDr. Jana Boháčková Švábová, LL.M MBA Ph.D.
• Reader: Radka MacGregor Pelikánová, externi

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Economics and Management

Master programme:
International Trade and Business