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Chapter 4: Implications for future reforms This chapter evaluates four different future scenarios of the CAP (summarized in table 2 below) and estimates the likelihood of the realization of these scenarios using the theoretical insights outlined in previous chapters. To provide further background information, the first section of the chapter gives an overview of the rather minor CAP Health Check reform that has taken place since the MTR. The final section of the chapter considers recent institutional developments and how these might impact CAP reform, and proposes a future research agenda. The CAP Health Check While MTR has given the current the CAP its current outlook, it is not the last reform that the CAP has gone thru. In November 2008—after French had considerably watered down the thrust of a new reform (Daugbjerg and Swinbank 2011, 71)—the Council reached agreement on the CAP Health Check, which in effect completed the Fischler Reform package. The main goal of this reform was to make the Single Farm Payment scheme more effective (in light of transfer efficiency shown on figure 6) and simpler by moving by away from the historical system that used to various extend in the old member states. Historical system, notes Nello (2011, 304), was becoming harder to defend over time and therefore, those still using it, were obliged to shift to the flatter rate regional system. Furthermore, virtually all direct payments were to be decoupled as the scope for member states to choose partial decoupling was reduced, eliminating the 25 per cent exception that lubricated the MTR deal in latter’s final stage. However, this complete decoupling posed “what might be called a public relations problem for 53