Brussels, 04/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - Copa-Cogeca has sent European Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan detailed proposals for simplifying the common agricultural policy (CAP) and cutting red tape for farmers. This comes after the Commission launched a screening exercise to simplify agriculture legislation. For Copa-Cogeca Secretary General Pekka Pesonen, “the risk of unintentional errors during the first years of implementing the CAP will be high, which would automatically cause payments to be cut. Since it is already too late to provide greater clarity about the rules, there must consequently be a certain amount of tolerance in the first years vis a vis cuts in greening payments. The whole sanctioning system also needs to be revised since even minor errors result in huge cuts in farmers' payments”.
Copa-Cogeca is also worried that the number of controls will increase as a result of the numerous direct aid schemes under the new CAP. “We will need to ensure that all eligibility conditions for the greening measures are controlled at the right moment with the higher control rate until all potential Ecological Focus Areas (EFA) have been mapped. We therefore believe for instance that it makes sense to check all greening requirements that can be controlled at that moment in one inspection only”, Pesonen said. (Lionel Changeur)