Introduced by the 2003 reform of the common agricultural policy, decoupling is the removal of the link between the receipt of a direct payment and the production of a specific product. Prior to this reform, farmers received a direct payment only if they produced the specific product to which the direct payment was associated. It meant that the profitability of producing a product (cereals, beefmeat…) did not depend only on the amount of money for which the farmer could sell the product in the market, but also on the amount of the direct payment that was associated with that particular product.Inter alia, the 2003 reform decoupled many direct payments from production and this process was continued in the 2009 ‘Health Check’.Member states are, however, permitted to continue to couple a small number of direct payments to production (for instance the suckler cow premium in France and the sheep and goat premium in some member states). The reason is to support the continued production of particular products and to avoid land falling out of farming in vulnerable regions.The overall effect of decoupling has been to move the agricultural sector more towards the free market and to give farmers greater freedom to produce according to market demand.