Development of Legal Regulation of the Direct Support of Agriculture in The Period of 2004 – 2013

The Accession Treaty allowed the new Member States to temporarily establish a different system of payment subsidies in agriculture, compared to the system in force in the old Member States. It is a system of the so called Single Area Payment Scheme (SAPS). This system can be used in the Slovak Republic until the end of 2013. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the rules for the direct support of agriculture within the SAPS and its actual implementation in the period 2004 - 2013.