One of the main objectives of the 2003 CAP reform was enhancing farm competitiveness by enabling farmers to catch market signals and to adjust their production level and specialisation accordingly. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effects of decoupling on the COP sector in Italy, by comparing some structural and economic indicators, based on ISTAT and FADN data, of a sample of farms before and after the 2003 reform. The analysis shows an improvement in the economic performance both for farms that kept COP specialisation and for farms that opted for a different specialisation, suggesting that decoupling farm support from production has contributed to a more efficient and market-oriented COP sector in Italy.