European Union agriculture ministers, meeting informally in the Chateau de Chambord in France on Friday 2 September, restated their support for the common agricultural policy (CAP), two months after the United Kingdom referendum that will take the UK out of the EU (see EUROPE 11580).
Ministers, invited to the meeting by their French counterpart, Stéphane Le Foll, also underlined the need to simplify CAP rules and to adapt the policy to the crises being faced.
“There will be no ‘CAP-exit’”, stated Le Foll, summing up the discussions. Four areas of consensus were reached, he said: - support for the CAP and the budget allocated to it; - the need to simplify the rules; - the need to address the major issues (food, environmental, economic and territorial); - improvement of crisis management tools.
On this last point, Le Foll even raised the possibility of a third pillar for the CAP (the first is made up of direct aid and market expenditure and the second brings together rural development schemes). “Some tools can be improved to help farmers get through these crises”, the French minister said.
“This meeting – the first ever in this format, bringing together ministers and representatives of the European Parliament outside the traditional institutional framework – has provided the opportunity to gauge the support of all for the European ideal and a strong, structuring and responsive CAP”, said the French Agriculture Ministry in a press release.
German Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt also gave his backing to the CAP budget and the need to simplify the policy.
France could ask for EU solidarity fund support. Speaking after the meeting, FNSEA President Xavier Beulin, who was representing COPA, the committee of agricultural professional organisations in the EU, said he hoped that France might be allocated aid from the EU solidarity fund in the wake of the climate events that have resulted in poor cereal crops. “In light of the scale of the damage, France ought to submit a request”, he said.
With the livestock, milk and cereals sectors all in deep crisis, ministers held workshops to discuss the CAP in response to challenges such as globalisation and climate change.
Discussions were informed by the French document on the CAP post-2020 that was presented at the previous informal meeting of agriculture ministers in Amsterdam in May (see EUROPE 11562). In it, France makes suggestions on how to improve the rules on the greening of aid and how to tackle the various risks (health, climate and economic crises) more effectively.
Close to the chateau, around which there was tight security, several agricultural unions demonstrated against the ministers who “live like lords while farmers are going to the wall”, said the president of Coordination rurale (France), Bernard Lannes. Twenty European ministers attended the meeting in Chambord but not Agriculture Commissioner, Phil Hogan. Hogan will attend a major conference on rural development policy in Cork, Ireland, on Monday 5 September. On Monday 12 and Tuesday 13 September, EU ministers will meet informally in Bratislava to take stock of the current crisis and of the future of the CAP. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)