Brussels, 06/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - During a "CAP - Beyond the crisis, paving the way for a sustainable growth" conference organised on Tuesday 5 April in Brussels, several speakers called for new instruments to be set up to help meet the challenges confronting European farmers.
The Farm Europe think tank explained that "since 2006, when farm incomes in Europe and in the United States were still balanced, the US has managed to double its farmers' incomes, while the EU has experienced stagnation and even a slight decrease across the same period". This analysis of the evolution of farmers' incomes on both sides of the Atlantic was presented at the European Parliament during the launch event of Farm Europe's Global Food Forum (GFF) initiative on Tuesday. The key objective of the GFF will be to go beyond current pessimism, with the ambition of tabling proposals for an EU policy better oriented towards job creation and sustainable growth. The recommendations will be presented to decision-makers at the end of the year.
The European Commissioner for Agriculture, Phil Hogan, acknowledged that "The crisis in the agricultural markets, particularly in the dairy and pig meat sectors and looks likely to be with us for a while yet. It is useful, therefore, to have this opportunity to see what the CAP can do, not alone for food producers but for society".
Michel Dantin MEP (EPP, France) welcomed Farm Europe's initiative and said that "The current CAP remains stuck in a political vision and principles from 1992, i.e. almost 30 years ago". He added that the CAP no longer meets the ambitions that the European Union must have for its agriculture and agri-food sectors and concluded that they needed to develop an environment that allows these industries to express their potential for growth and employment.
Yves Madre from Farm Europe presented the key questions to be discussed during the GFF Forum, which will be structured around 3 key pillars: resilience, sustainability and investments. He also posed the following questions: Do European farmers compete on a level playing field? Do we need further adaptations of the CAP in order to boost investments and better structure the food chain? Are decoupled payments still the right policy response to cope with volatility? Is there a scope to increase the efficiency of the greening of the CAP, for example, transforming it into an objective based policy?
Xavier Beulin, the President of the FNSEA explained that single farm payment per hectare and a coercive greening did not make a Common Agricultural Policy and argued that "We need a strong partnership between Europe and its farmers".
Mario Guidi the President of Confagricoltura and GFF Chairman explained that the crisis we are facing today shows how CAP needs to be rethought to adapt its instruments to the current world economy. He also said they were in need of, "radically new instruments allowing farmers to tackle the challenges of competitiveness, volatility and sustainability".
Markus Neundörfer, the Director of Südzucker underlined the importance of the single market as a major strength for the European economy but also explained that "there are more and more national diverging approaches such as in labelling and health rules, or interpretation of competition rules, not mentioning the flexibilities given to Member States in crisis management or in terms of coupled payments".
Paolo de Castro (S&D, Italy) concluded that the CAP needs a mid-term review in order to achieve less bureaucracy and to strengthen the capacity of the European Union to react collectively to market crisis, "preventing the pitfall of renationalisation". (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)