Brussels, 08/05/2012 (Agence Europe) - A large majority of EU member state experts meeting on Monday 7 May within the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) supported the proposal aimed at implementing eight biophysical criteria whereby areas subject to natural constraints (disadvantaged areas) may be delimited as of 2014, as this would give a transparent and uniform system for the EU. The SCA discussed the aspect of the Commission proposal on rural development (Art. 32-33) relating to disadvantaged areas, a proposal that is part of the package on reform of the common agricultural policy (CAP). The Agriculture Council of 14 May is due to discuss the rural development regulation.
Countries in favour of the new criteria for determining less-favoured areas (and that receive aid under rural development programmes) - such as Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Germany, Romania, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Italy - consider that the status quo on this issue is no longer possible since the opinion delivered by the EU Court of Auditors (in 2003) and the conclusions of the 2009 Agriculture Council which cast doubt as to the way such areas are calculated. However, some delegations (France, Luxembourg, among others) would nonetheless be in favour of status quo or temporarily keeping the current system in place (Poland, Ireland). This group of countries would be ready to endorse the Commission's proposal if some of their concerns on the subject of defining zones are taken into account. Some countries recommend that socio-economic criteria should be added to the biophysical criteria (a comment made by Poland in particular), while others are opposed, such as the United Kingdom and Finland.
On the subject of fine-tuning criteria for the delimitation of areas, a large majority of countries (including France, Poland, the Netherlands and Romania) would like the 66% threshold for utilised agricultural area (UAA) in Art. 33§3 to be reduced, and some expressed a preference for the limit to be 50% (Belgium, Slovakia, Ireland, Cyprus, etc). The Commission representative said that such a reduction of the UAA level would be difficult to envisage in so far as, with the 66% threshold, prior assessments show that the (new version) surface area of disadvantaged areas would increase by 40%.
On the subject of the level of application of criteria for less-favoured farming areas, the Commission considers that the criteria should be applied at the level of local administrative units 2 (LAU 2) (the smallest common denominator of similar surface area in all EU countries). Several delegations (United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden and Belgium, for example) would be more in favour of a lower level of administrative division of a country (which could be the farm size, for example).
Finally, most countries (Italy, Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Romania, the Netherlands to mention but a few) agree there should be a transitional period for currently less-favoured farming areas that would no longer be admissible for the payment further to the new delimitation (decreasing scale of payments from 2014 up to 80% of the payment received in 2013, to reach 20% in 2017). Some delegations (Austria, Latvia, Cyprus, Poland, etc) would like the date for transition to be 2020. (LC/transl.jl)