Brussels, 04/02/2010 (Agence Europe) - Mariann Fischer Boel will cede her post as the agriculture commissioner to Dacian Ciolos with a fine record of agricultural reform to her name. She remembers, for example, being criticised by the sector during the reform of the wine sector, but believes she was right not to give way. Over the years, this former Danish agriculture minister became more and more sympathetic to the retention of a strong common agricultural policy (CAP).
Between 2004 and 2009 “the CAP has been on the move”, she says in a paper charting the course of agricultural and rural policy over this period (http: //ec.europa.eu/agriculture.publi/mfb/2004-2009_en.pdf).
“We have carefully steered the CAP to keep it facing squarely towards unfolding challenges - such as the need to sharpen the farm sector's competitive edge, to make environmental care a central plank of policy, and to respond to the international food crisis. We have cleaned out the stables in terms of day-to-day management of the CAP - making it simpler, sounder, stronger, more visible to the public. All this while smoothly integrating 12 new member states into the EU and its agricultural system. And we have transposed the principles of the reformed CAP into the international context, looking for ways of underpinning trade and food security around the world,” Fischer Boel says.
When she took up office in 2004, a new chapter in the story of the CAP had just opened. A reform agreement struck in the blisteringly hot summer of 2003 had set out plans for a radical rebuilding of the CAP. The main innovation was the so-called “decoupling” of income support payments to farmers. Farmers who received decoupled payments could choose what to produce - and how much - without affecting the value of their decoupled payments. The second innovation of the 2003 reform was the linking of income support to standards of environmental care, animal welfare and public health, through a system known as “cross-compliance”. Also important was the decision to transfer funding out of farmers' income support payments and into the EU's rural development policy (“modulation”).
“My task for the next few years was not to rip up this foundation and lay yet another. My task was to firm up that foundation, then to build on it - helping the CAP to deliver in practice in a changing world,” she says. Her departments began by examining three areas of the CAP which the 2003 reform had to some extent neglected: sugar, fruit and vegetables, and wine. These sectors had initially been left alone partly because of their very individual “personalities” and partly because reforming them presented huge political difficulties. Steps were also taken to bolster the rural development policy. Later, the “CAP Health Check” made further policy adjustments to ensure that the reformed CAP was working as intended and was addressing the challenges of the 21st century.
Sugar. The changes agreed in 2005 cut the benchmark EU sugar price by 36 per cent over several years. This helped to bring the EU sugar industry back into a “sustainable and more natural” balance with the rest of the world market - as a net importer rather than exporter. Bringing sugar beet farmers into the single payment scheme gave them support which was “in line with the need for competitiveness”. The reforms are also funding restructuring programmes in areas where sugar factories shut down - helping workers laid off to find new jobs, and putting disused factory sites back into good environmental condition.
Wine. In December 2007, the EU agreed a reform package to put its wine sector back on a sustainable footing for the long term. Subsidies for distilling unwanted wines are being phased out, and the money is being spent instead on a broad menu of measures - from which member states take their pick - to make the wine sector more competitive and to care for vine landscapes. In an important step to prepare for liberalisation, a three-year voluntary “grubbing-up scheme” - with strong environmental safeguards - is offering money to uncompetitive producers who wish to dig up their vines and leave the sector. From 2016, competitive producers will have greater freedom to plant more vines and therefore to benefit from growing global demand.
Health Check. Council agreement on the Health Check came in November 2008. The EU's rural development policy appeared to provide the best policy toolbox to help farms and other rural businesses respond to the following pressing challenges: - fighting and adjusting to climate change; - managing water more carefully; - providing and using renewable energy; - conserving biodiversity; - and pursuing innovation in all of these areas. To these principal challenges the EU added the task of supporting economic adjustment in the dairy sector. Therefore, a key element of the Health Check agreement is that, by 2012, EU farmers will be contributing an extra 5% of their income support payments to rural development policy (through modulation). A further 4 per cent is being transferred annually from all income support payment amounts above a threshold of €300,000. This finally establishes a “progressive” principle long supported by the public - namely, that farmers who receive high levels of income support from the EU budget should make larger “contributions” to projects of general public interest.
The Health Check is decoupling a greater share of farmers' income support payments. The Health Check is also removing constraints on farmers' freedom to produce more in response to market demand. The requirement to “set aside” a portion of their arable land is abolished, and milk production quotas are being enlarged to prepare for their removal in 2015. Finally, traditional mechanisms for regulating farm prices - such as the temporary buying-up and public storage of produce - are being scaled down so that their influence is felt only in times of crisis. They are thus a strand in a safety net, not regular price setters.
“Building up, not breaking up - this is the right future for the CAP”: the final words of Mariann Fischer Boel, as she hands over the baton to Dacian Ciolos, in whom she places great hope. (L.C./transl.rt)