Legal principles of state regulation of agriculture in the EU

The legal principles of state regulation of agriculture in the European Union are investigated in the article. The relevance of this research is determined and substantiated. The importance of determining the priority areas of development of this sector of activity and the state economy is shown, and ensuring all necessary conditions for the development of agriculture as a type of entrepreneurship. It is established that the goal of state regulation of agriculture is to create stable economic, social and legal conditions for its development, which is explained by the special conditions of the functioning of agriculture. It is revealed that state regulation of the agricultural sector in Europe has an economic focus, and one of its most important functions is to regulate the quantity and quality of products produced by controlling the organizational and economic structure of production, in particular by encouraging cooperation and vertical integration, which has an impact on the sectoral specialization of agricultural production and the procedure for supplying them to the population. It is shown that important functions of state regulation also include management of technical progress in agriculture through a system of scientific institutions or educational institutions, vocational training, advanced training, provision of advisory assistance to farmers; technical and commercial services through public procurement, public wholesale markets, veterinary services and lending, as well as the development and implementation of special programs for the development of rural areas. It is analyzed that in addition to the use of indirect economic levers, in some countries there are also measures of direct intervention in production in order to limit it. In particular, by introducing quotas for the production of certain types of products. It is substantiated that almost all countries of the European Union spend about half of their national agricultural budgets on structural policy, namely on modernization and enlargement of farms, improvement of the quality of land and other agricultural resources, improvement of the operational work of farmers, reduction of production costs and development of disadvantaged areas.