The study examines the budget negotiations that led up to the multiannual financial framework (MFF) period of 2020 to 2027, as it relates to the common agricultural policy (CAP) and why it still (despite the relative economic decline of agriculture) occupies such a large share of the EU:s budget. By doing a qualitative document analysis of the official positions of important EU institutions leading up to the MFF for the period 2020-2027 this study studies the arguments that actors use to preserve CAP:s large budget share. The analysis uses both liberal intergovernmentalism (LI) and new intergovernmentalism (NI) to shine light on some of the reasons why large scale reforms to CAP are so difficult. The findings show that the major net contributors to the EU budget do not seek to reform or reduce CAP in any meaningful way, instead they seek to limit the total size of the EU:s budget. This combined with EU institutions who seek consensus and reluctance among member states to further strengthen supranational institutions like the European Commission makes large scale reform to CAP unlikely. To justify the large share of the budget that CAP takes up, several EU institutions try to legitimize it by tying CAP to other goals and issues, for example climate change and sustainability.