Approximately 38% of the EU budget (equivalent to 0.4% of the Union’s GDP) is spent on agriculture and rural development. This pooling of resources at EU level ensures efficient and effective spending that avoids distorting the internal market and delivers a wide range of public goods. It is much more efficient to have one common policy achieving common goals such as food security than 28 different competing national policies, and this efficiency frees up funds in national budgets to be spent elsewhere.