The EU’s Committee of the Region’s natural resources (NAT) commission adopted a draft opinion on Thursday 1 June calling for a “fair, sustainable and solidarity-based common agricultural policy that is economically, socially, environmentally, regionally and internationally legitimate”, in the words of rapporteur Guillaume Cros (PES, France), the vice-president of the Regional Council of Occitanie (see EUROPE 11794).
The rapporteur argued that farmers’ incomes should be guaranteed by fair and stable agricultural prices and that fairer distribution of public funding among agricultural holdings and among member states was needed. The draft opinion also calls for regulation of agricultural markets to prevent surpluses or shortfalls, refocusing the EU’s agricultural trade policy towards exporting products with high added value, thereby enhancing regions, and distributing profit margins more fairly between those operating supply chains, from producers to distributers.
In the first pillar of the CAP (direct aid), the NAT commission backs capping and varying direct payments per agricultural worker, in order to legitimise public funding and develop agricultural holdings on a human scale that provide employment. Other demands for the first pillar include reducing the gap in the levels of direct payments to member states and strengthening greening through crop rotation, introducing leguminous plants, and transitioning towards pesticide-free crops and livestock farming on a human scale.
Bolstering rural development policy (second pillar) is also suggested, as is leaving local and regional authorities greater freedom to transfer more funding to the second pillar. The NAT commission argues, inter alia, for support for young farmers, the short supply chains preferred by consumers, good quality supply chains, collective catering using organic and local produce and the small-scale processing of products.
The draft opinion will be put to a vote at the Committee of the Regions’ plenary session on 12-13 July 2017. The final text will be the CoR’s contribution ahead of publication by the European Commission of its communication on the modernisation of the CAP before the end of the year. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)