At the meeting of the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) on Tuesday, 11 June, EU Member State delegations confirmed that there is still a lot of work to be done before a common position can be found on the post-2020 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
The Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU presented the Member States with a report on the state of negotiations on the three regulations relating to the new CAP (strategic plans, common market organisation and horizontal regulation). A version of this report, probably in amended form, will be presented to the EU Agriculture Ministers on Tuesday, 18 June in Luxembourg (see EUROPE 12272/9).
At the SCA meeting, the European Commission representative welcomed the progress report and commended the efforts made by the Romanian Presidency over the last six months to obtain a partial general approach in the Council of the EU. However, he highlighted some parts of the report as problematic: - the targeting of support (including the proposed definition of a 'genuine farmer'); - the weakening, in the Commission’s opinion, of the environmental and climate ambition in the post-2020 CAP proposals; - sectoral interventions; - the retention of the €2000 threshold for financial discipline (the Commission wanted it removed); - certain provisions on regional paying agencies (in the horizontal regulation).
Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Several delegations to the SCA felt that the progress report provided a good basis for the continuation of work and recognised the progress made under the current Presidency of the Council of the EU. However, many delegations objected to the statement in the report saying that the horizontal regulation and the CMO Regulation are “broadly stable” (i.e. that there is agreement on these two texts between Member States), in light of the principle that ‘nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’.
The ‘difficult issues’. Member State experts mentioned a number of issues in the proposals that, in their opinion, would require more discussion (and should be more clearly highlighted in the Romanian Presidency's progress report): - the details of the new 'implementation model' (in particular indicators, unit amounts, content and the submission deadline of the Annual Performance Report); - green architecture (in particular conditionality and the exemption of small farmers from conditionality rules, and the voluntary or mandatory nature of eco-schemes or environmental programmes); - expenditure related to the environment in sectoral interventions and the scope of such interventions; - the Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) and controls and sanctions relating to conditionality; - the single audit approach and the agricultural reserve in the horizontal regulation; - the labelling of nutritional values of wine.
The Romanian Presidency took note of the delegations’ views and signalled that it would reflect on how they could be included in the post-2020 CAP progress report. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)