European Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan, speaking on the sidelines of the informal Agriculture Council meeting in Tallinn on Monday 4 September, told journalists that the Commission would adopt its communication on modernising and simplifying the common agricultural policy (CAP) towards the end of November.
He gave his backing to voluntary, rather than compulsory, measures on crisis management.
Crisis management tools will be the theme of the informal meeting of agriculture ministers in the Estonian capital on Tuesday 5 September. While the Estonian Presidency of the Council of the EU believes that the agricultural crisis reserve could be better used in future to tackle market crises (see EUROPE 11853), the commissioner is doubtful about using the reserve. It, indeed, has never been used as it is built up by reducing the money available for agricultural aid. Hogan would prefer to make use of the instruments currently available under the first and second pillar of the CAP.
Portuguese Agriculture Minister Luis Capoulas Santos, on the other hand, speaking to a small group of journalists, backed the ideas of the Estonian Presidency on the crisis reserve (keeping the unused money rather than handing it back to the member states).
The Portuguese minister said that all EU agriculture ministers were on the defensive over the reform. “There’s no need to revolutionise the CAP- just bring some developments to it on a few points”, he argued, citing the greening of direct aid, risk- and crisis-management tools and strengthening the position of farmers on the food supply chain.
Slovak minister Gabriela Matečná, as the Estonian Presidency and the Visegrad group of countries (Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary) had done, highlighted the need to further improve convergence of direct aid.
European People’s Party adopts position on post-2024. Given the uncertainty surrounding Brexit, the centre-right European People’s Party, which holds 241 seats in the European Parliament, is proposing to delay the entry into force of the reviewed and amended CAP until 2025. According information relayed by Agra Europe, the official position adopted by its political assembly in Copenhagen on Monday 4 September, following discussions chaired by MEP Michel Dantin and German Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt, is that the new CAP should retain the structure of the current policy but significantly amend arrangements on greening, put in place a crisis fund that is not subject to an annual budget approach and make it possible to strengthen the negotiating power of producer organisations in the food chain.
Mercosur. Commissioner Hogan noted that negotiations on an association agreement – including a trade chapter – between the EU and Mercosur (see EUROPE 11852) would resume in October. Offers on market access will be exchanged by the EU and the Mercosur countries in October. Hogan repeated that the parties were keen to conclude a political agreement on the negotiations for an association agreement before the end of 2017.
Fipronil. The commissioner made the point that egg prices had risen since the scandal of the fipronil-tainted eggs and that “the poultry sector has not been affected” so far by the fall-out (see EUROPE 11837). Health and Food Safety Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis will update ministers on the latest developments in this affair in Tallinn on Tuesday 5 September. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)