Increased powers for producer organisations, stronger risk management tools, more robust market measures in the event of crises and flexibility on greening: with the adoption on the 3rd of May of its opinion on the omnibus regulation, the European Parliament’s agriculture committee called for the basic acts of the common agricultural policy (CAP) to be amended – precisely what the European Commission and most of the member states were hoping to avoid (see EUROPE 11780).
These amendments will be incorporated into the report on the omnibus regulations as a whole which the Parliamentary budgets and budgetary control committees, as the lead committees, are due to adopt on 30 May. Parliament will then – probably in June – have to approve a mandate for the negotiations with the Council and Commission.
Producer organisations. The committee calls for mandatory recognition of producer organisations that fulfil set criteria to be extended to all sectors, not just milk. All recognised farmers’ organisations should be allowed to plan production and negotiate delivery contracts on behalf of their members without falling foul of the EU’s competition rules. Collective negotiations are currently allowed only for milk, olive oil, beef, cereals and protein crops producers. The Commission, the committee says, should present draft legislation by 30 June 2018 on measures to combat unfair trading practices in the food supply chain.
Risk management. The committee wants all current risk management tools (in the second pillar, rural development policy), such as insurance and mutual funds, to be able provide up to 70% (as against 65% at present) compensation for farmers who lose more than 20% (currently 30%) of their annual production. The Commission has proposed the same measure but only for losses covered by the income support tool.
Market measures. The committee calls for the measure which grants aid to dairy farmers who voluntarily reduce supply of their geographically protected products (PDO and PGI labels) in times of serious market imbalances to be extended to all other sectors. A specific measure of this type was triggered for all producers during the recent milk crisis. In times of crisis, the Commission should have more room for manoeuvre to allow it to take exceptional measures quickly without first having to activate the public intervention and private storage measures. The committee also calls for coupled support, currently limited to sectors or regions struggling with maintaining previous levels of production, to be automatically allowed for the protein crops sector.
Active farmers and young farmers. The committee backs the Commission proposal to give member states more flexibility in the definition of “active farmer”. However, it does not want the criteria that have been set to be made optional from 2018. The committee wants member states to be allowed to increase young farmers’ top-ups from 25% to 50% of the basic payment entitlement without increasing the area of land eligible. The top-up should also be made available to farmers under 40 years old who have already been farming for some time, but only if they have not been in receipt of young farmers’ support.
Greening. The amendments include an amendment of the definition of arable land, bringing in fallow land and temporary grassland. Thus, arable land which lies fallow or under grass for more than five years would not automatically be considered permanent grassland and could once again be used for growing crops. The size of holding for which the diversification obligation requires only two different crops (and not three) is amended from the current 10-30 hectares to 15-30 hectares to bring this exemption threshold into line with the one set for ecological focus areas (15 hectares). The committee adds short-term rotation crops, such as miscanthus, to the list of crops that can be planted in ecological focus areas. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)