EU reaches new Common Agricultural Policy agreement
July 01, 2013 | 07:03 PM
European Union negotiators last week reached an agreement on a revision of the EU Common Agricultural Policy for the period 2014 to 2020.
The agreement was reached Wednesday between the European Commission, the EU executive branch, the Council of Ministers, made up of the agriculture ministers of the 27 member countries, and for the first time the European Parliament.
The CAP will cost $485 billion (373.2 billion euros) over the seven-year period, with the amount going down from 55.9 billion euros in 2014 to 50.6 billion euros by 2010.
Negotiators appear to have made progress in reaching a goal of making the CAP fairer to the countries that have more recently joined the EU and greener, meaning that the importance of environmental measures have been stressed.
Negotiators did not approve a proposal to limit payments to 150,000 euros per farm, but farmers who get more than that will lose 5 percent of their payments.
The new agreement gives individual countries more authority to adapt the programs to their farmers’ needs.
The direct payments, which have been based on a farmer’s historical payments, will move to a new basis within each country. Thirty percent of the basis will be linked to sustainable farming practices but countries will also be allowed to link a portion of the direct payments to production.
Farmers under 40 will get an extra 25 percent payment for five years.
The sugar quota regime will end in 2017, milk quotas will expire in 2015, and the system of wine planting rights at the end of 2015, with the introduction of a system of authorizations for new vine planting beginning in 2016.
Copa-Cogeca , the European equivalent of the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, said the agreement would end uncertainty for farmers, “but faced with increasing challenges, like rising food demand expected to grow by 70 percent by 2050, we regret that more was not done to strengthen the economic role of farmers and agri-cooperative in producing quality food.”
FNSEA, the largest farm lobby in France, praised the conclusion of the negotiations, saying that the agreement appears to give member states numerous “tools” to aid farmers, but that government officials should “take care not to create more challenges” for producers.
The accord is 1,350 pages long.
“It’s going to take a long time to convert this into national legislation,” Stephane Le Foll, France’s agriculture minister, said at a news conference in Paris, according to Bloomberg Business Week.
The agreement was reached Wednesday between the European Commission, the EU executive branch, the Council of Ministers, made up of the agriculture ministers of the 27 member countries, and for the first time the European Parliament.
The CAP will cost $485 billion (373.2 billion euros) over the seven-year period, with the amount going down from 55.9 billion euros in 2014 to 50.6 billion euros by 2010.
Negotiators appear to have made progress in reaching a goal of making the CAP fairer to the countries that have more recently joined the EU and greener, meaning that the importance of environmental measures have been stressed.
Negotiators did not approve a proposal to limit payments to 150,000 euros per farm, but farmers who get more than that will lose 5 percent of their payments.
The new agreement gives individual countries more authority to adapt the programs to their farmers’ needs.
The direct payments, which have been based on a farmer’s historical payments, will move to a new basis within each country. Thirty percent of the basis will be linked to sustainable farming practices but countries will also be allowed to link a portion of the direct payments to production.
Farmers under 40 will get an extra 25 percent payment for five years.
The sugar quota regime will end in 2017, milk quotas will expire in 2015, and the system of wine planting rights at the end of 2015, with the introduction of a system of authorizations for new vine planting beginning in 2016.
Copa-Cogeca , the European equivalent of the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, said the agreement would end uncertainty for farmers, “but faced with increasing challenges, like rising food demand expected to grow by 70 percent by 2050, we regret that more was not done to strengthen the economic role of farmers and agri-cooperative in producing quality food.”
FNSEA, the largest farm lobby in France, praised the conclusion of the negotiations, saying that the agreement appears to give member states numerous “tools” to aid farmers, but that government officials should “take care not to create more challenges” for producers.
The accord is 1,350 pages long.
“It’s going to take a long time to convert this into national legislation,” Stephane Le Foll, France’s agriculture minister, said at a news conference in Paris, according to Bloomberg Business Week.
