Brussels, 20/07/2016 (Agence Europe) - EU agriculture ministers were divided in Brussels on Monday 18 July over the extent to which the greening of direct payments have to be simplified (EUROPE 11583).
At a press conference, German Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt was sceptical of the measures presented by the Commission to simplify greening rules. He talked about them being one step forward, two steps back. He criticised the measure banning the use of pesticides in ecological focus areas (EFAs). At the Council, the Hungarian, Romanian and Luxembourg ministers, in particular, backed the German position on this point.
France felt that the issue of pesticides was too important to be dealt with by means of a delegated act and argued that it comes under the basic act. France, like other countries, does not want simplification of greening to result in any changes to the basic acts on the reformed common agricultural policy (CAP), only to delegated acts. The Slovak Presidency of the Council of the EU said that several ministers had made suggestions, including on the use of plant health products and EFAs.
European Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan set out for ministers the findings of the evaluation by his staff of the greening of aid (30% of aid linked to environmentally friendly practices) one year after the system was implemented. “Greening is working but, as in many other areas, it can be improved to make it work more effectively and deliver better results.” The ultimate goal, he said, is to ensure that procedures are simplified for farmers, even if that initially means extra work for the member states. The Commission hopes to adopt a raft of amendments in September to come into effect in 2017. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)