The Romanian Presidency of the EU Council and the European Commission wrote on 8 March to the President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, asking him to ask MEPs of the European Parliament Agriculture Committee to speed up work on the post-2020 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
For the time being, the Parliament Agriculture Committee only intends to vote on the reports on the three legislative proposals for the post-2020 CAP at the beginning of April, which excludes a vote in plenary before the May elections.
Romanian Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă and European Budget Commissioner Günther Oettinger have written to the Parliament’s President asking for his support in order to “speed up” work on sectoral legislative proposals that depend on the Union's next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), “with a view to concluding provisional agreements [between the European institutions] on as many proposals as possible” before the end of the parliamentary term.
They consider it “essential” to continue efforts, especially with regard to the two key pillars of the EU, the Cohesion Policy and the CAP, adding that, for the latter, the priority should now be to rapidly finalise the negotiating positions in order to enable interinstitutional negotiations to start.
Debate in the European Parliament Agriculture Committee on Monday, 18 March. The European Parliament Agriculture Committee will hold an exchange of views on Monday, 18 March on the ongoing work on the legislative proposals on the CAP (see EUROPE 12182/13).
The Agriculture Committee's votes on the report by Esther Herranz García (EPP, Spain) on strategic plans (with a record 6,000 amendments) and on the report by Eric Andrieu (S&D, France) on the common market organisation (CMO) are scheduled for 2 April. The vote on Ulrike Müller's (ALDE, Germany) report on the horizontal regulation (financing, management and monitoring) is scheduled for 8 April.
MEPs in the Parliament’s Environment Committee also want the Agriculture Committee to speed up its work in order to allow a plenary vote "before the end of the current mandate", according to a letter from the Environment Committee to President Tajani. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)