Brussels, 22/07/2010 (Agence Europe) - “To guarantee territorial cohesion - set as one of the political objectives of the EU in the Lisbon Treaty - we must strive to ensure that all the EU's sectoral policies are coherent and complementary. Before considering corrective or compensatory measures, we must anticipate the consequences that the new legislation will have on regions and local communities. This is why the Committee believes that all major reforms of European policies should be subject to territorial impact studies, including the CAP”, said the president of the Committee of the Regions (CoR), Mercedes Bresso, in her speech to the conference on the future of the CAP post-2013 (see EUROPE 10184).
Bresso stressed that studies of this kind should not be limited to just the “rural development” plank of the CAP - where the effects on the local regions are clear - but should also extend to the plank of this policy dealing with agricultural production. Farming activities have a major impact on local communities, which must therefore be taken into account when proposing any changes to the effects of the CAP on that economic sector. Bresso also reiterated the Committee's position that the CAP must be brought more into line with the cohesion policy, in order to maximise the efficiency of both.
Adopting an approach based on multi-level government - European, national and regional - is a vital condition for a successful new CAP after 2013 and would help greatly to increase the benefits of the CAP for the local communities, Bresso added. “Regions and rural communities can no longer be mere co-financers of programmes - they must be actively involved in the development, implementation and management of those programmes too. A successful overhaul of the common agricultural policy requires across-the-board involvement of the regional or local level”, President Bresso commented.
Lastly, Bresso reiterated the principle messages of the own-initiative opinion on the future of the CAP (adopted one month ago), which include the fact that the future CAP: (1) must guarantee fair treatment for crops and regions, via a more flexible set of support instruments, (2) must encourage and promote production practices and systems which most respect the environment and natural resources, (3) must take account of employment on each individual holding. (G. B./transl.fl)