This is a remarkable book in more than one sense. It is a “lawyers’ “book, in fact the first of its kind in the English language. It deals with a non-lawyers’—economists’, political scientists’—subject which is rarely considered by academic lawyers, not least because of its daunting complexities. It should also prove attractive to agro-practitioners and decision-makers as the book apparently effaces their most notorious conundrum: it toils on underworked ground, yet produces high yield and even has a green dust jacket!

A few introductory remarks set the scene: the book is concerned with the legal consequences of the policy decision, inevitable in post-war Europe, to include agriculture in the construction of the Common Market; consequences which manifested themselves in fundamental institutional, financial and legal developments in the Community, most notably in the so-called Luxembourg Accords of 1966. While this constitutes a refreshingly direct approach “in medias res”, a more detailed description of the peculiar features of the agricultural sector might have been welcome to the uninitiated reader. It is a common experience that technical questions of law, in a court case for instance, are more readily comprehended in their proper factual context. Thus, the primacy of the agricultural sector, its socio-economic and constitutional functions in various polities as reflected in considerable regulation in municipal law might have been mentioned here.

The author reassuringly follows the scheme of the Treaty, from the general structure to the special rules, and from aims and principles of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to their implementation and administration through various common organizations of particular product markets. His approach successfully combines description and analysis of treaty