Brussels, 20/07/2010 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission will adopt, in mid-November, a communication on the future of the common agricultural policy (CAP) after 2013, when the current EU financial framework comes to an end. This communication is expected to recommend that aid be better and more fairly shared out, the retention of the two pillars of the CAP, crisis prevention instruments and new instruments to tackle income volatility.
After a two-day conference on the future of the CAP, European Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Cioloº said that there was agreement on the major challenges faced by agriculture, while conceding that there were “differing views on the instruments” needed for the future. “Farmers have no need to feel ashamed at being supported by public funds,” the commissioner said. He conceded that support had to be “better allocated, better targeted and more understandable”. The idea of applying a single payment rate was attractive to some, but, the commissioner said, fairness is more valuable than equality. He acknowledged that there had to be an end to historic criteria (used to determine the level of some forms of aid). “We have to use objective, realistic criteria: type of farm, socio-economic, climatic and environmental context,” he stated.
He argued for the retention of the two pillars, “two complementary facets of the CAP”. The first pillar represents the support for all of Europe's farmers on an annual basis. The rural development policy of the second pillar refers to the development of sectors and regions, including on the environmental level. It must be flexible enough to achieve its objectives.
Cioloº said that, within the framework of the challenge presented by globalisation, he would be prepared to raise the issue of proteins, but taking account of the agronomic capacity of the European Union and the environmental contribution of legume vegetables. With regard to the environmental challenge, he admitted that agriculture had to improve its production practices and reduce its carbon emissions. In terms of the economic challenge, Cioloº will work on the following priorities: - reinforcing “our common risk prevention and crisis management” - a “solid safety net”, over and above direct aid, “is needed,” he said; - maintaining market management instruments; - considering new ways to “respond to the problem of the excessive revenue volatility”. The commissioner said that “the CAP must allow us to preserve the balance of our land”. In the face of this challenge, “a clear agreement exists on the need to develop and reform the CAP”.
Padraig Walsh, President of COPA (Committee of Professional Agricultural Organisations in the EU) spoke at the conference to highlight the lack of consistency in Community policies. “Whilst greening the CAP and imposing an increasing number of environmental and food safety regulations on EU farmers' operations, the European Commission is opening trade talks with Mercosur countries which do not have to follow these high standards. Yet this would cause further deforestation in these countries as well as increase unemployment in the rural areas of the EU,” he argued. He said that the future does not look very bright (price volatility is increasing, the EU has offered to cut farm tariffs by an average of 60% in the Doha Round, and the Commission is preparing to offer further preferential access to Brazil). “To make matters worse, we hear some people proposing that EU farmers be squeezed still further in the future, by imposing costly regulations and obligations on them and by cutting CAP support further. This is absurd. If support was cut, EU farming would become in fact more intensive,” he said.
Paolo Bruni, President of COGECA (General Committee for Agricultural Cooperation in the European Union), urged the European Commission to “ensure that there is a robust CAP in the future, which improves farmers' competitive position and strengthens their economic role in providing services and food for 500 million consumers”. In his view, the European agriculture budget and direct payments to farmers must “at least be maintained, in order to safeguard a competitive EU agriculture sector and a flourishing countryside”. (L.C./transl.rt)