Brussels, 01/06/2010 (Agence Europe) - The debate between agriculture ministers from EU member states on outlines for the post-2013 common agricultural policy (CAP) was held on Tuesday 1 June in Mérida (the West of Spain) and provided an idea of what instruments could be used for predicting and preventing price volatility for food products. A majority of European agriculture ministers appealed for a strong post-2013 CAP to be maintained, together with possibly modified mechanisms for managing and regulating the markets. A conference will take place on 19-20 July in Brussels to assess how the great citizens' debate on the future of the CAP is going, which was launched by the European Commission last April. Towards the end of 2010, the Commission will present a communication on reform of the CAP, before legislative proposals towards the middle of next year. The reformed CAP is expected to enter into force on 1 January 2014.
During a press conference, Spanish Minister Elena Espinosa said that “the majority of member states want agriculture to play a central role in meeting the major challenges existing in Europe, such as sustainability and climate change, and to provide healthy, safe and quality food for the whole population”. Many countries also said that it was necessary to “produce more with less”. Agriculture can also play a role in combating the current economic crisis. The Spanish minister said that “agriculture is part of the solution” for helping a strengthened Europe get out of the crisis and “lay the basis for a sustainable economy”. She added that “we want a strong CAP to be maintained and linked to research, innovation and competitiveness”. Ministers also called for “a review of CAP instruments to reach these objectives”, Espinosa concluded, in a reference to the need to find answers to price volatility and having a food production chain that worked more efficiently. Almost 10,000 Spanish farmers demonstrated in the streets of Mérida calling for the resignation of Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero and Espinosa, due to the scale of the crisis affecting this sector.
Dacian Cioloº, the European commissioner for agriculture, pointed out that “agriculture is not an economic sector like the others”. He added that the agriculture of the future must be competitive in all different areas (economic, environmental and social). Cioloº was asked about the future of the CAP budget and said that the EU needed a “strong and solid CAP”, which better reveals its “objectives and the instruments with which it can achieve them”. The commissioner explained that reform of the CAP should lead to making the instruments used more efficient: “For me, reform is not about weakening the CAP”.
“Raft of measures” against price volatility. Cioloº explained that in an effort to tackle market price volatility, “we need first of all market intervention systems, which are used as a safety net and not as a permanent mechanism that would increase the budget and send out wrong market signals to producers”. Each sector needs to know how to “adapt certain instruments without this implying significant budgetary spending”. The commissioner also said that they needed to find complementary mechanisms that can, as much as possible, “prevent significant price volatility affecting European markets”. He mentioned measures that were aimed at: strengthening farmers' negotiating powers; setting up a framework for negotiating in subsidiaries (perhaps in inter-professional organisations, such as those that already exist in other sectors); planning “an insurance system” (public, private or mixed but with a contribution being paid by farmers, explained the commissioner), “which could be introduced in situations where farmers' incomes are very strongly affected by this volatility”.
The commissioner explained that some of these measures for tackling volatility could enter into force in the post-2013 CAP, particularly in the milk sector (EUROPE 10149).
The debate on the future of the CAP provoked the traditional opposition between countries in favour of ambitious market regulation and the so-called liberal countries, which seek a more radical overhaul of the CAP. British Minister for Agriculture Caroline Spelman declared in a backdrop to the informal European ministers' meeting that Europe no longer had any money and that they had to work out spending priorities. The new British government (Liberal-Conservative) has informed its European partners that it remains firmly committed to the “radical reform of the CAP”. Spelman also asserted that they wanted a CAP that is better adapted to their needs and explained that large British farms were having difficulties in satisfying much of the criteria for European aid programmes.
Copa (EU farmers' organisation) and Cogeca (EU agri-cooperatives) have requested that the EU strengthen the economic role of farmers in the production of food, so that they can play a key role in the EU 2020 strategy and protect 28 million jobs in rural regions. (L.C./transl.fl)