In a joint statement issued on 28 September, the Visegrad countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia), the Baltic States, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Slovenia called for “the greatest possible flexibility”, regarding the ‘green architecture’ of the future Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), with measures that are “realistic, implementable and comprehensible for farmers”.
Green architecture is one of the most difficult subjects in the CAP negotiations. EU Agriculture Ministers hope to reach a ‘general approach’ on the post-2020 CAP on 20 October (see EUROPE 12570/11).
However, for the eleven countries that signed the joint declaration, the eco-schemes (ecological programmes) proposed by the European Commission under the first pillar (direct aid) of the CAP constitute a new solution that is difficult to implement and “bearing uncertainty” concerning the scale of interest on the part of the farmers for these measures.
In this context, they oppose the introduction of solutions that would reduce the flexibility of this instrument. They call for a flexible approach and measures that will prevent the loss of funds if farmers are not interested in this form of support.
Finally, they consider it necessary to avoid an additional and disproportionate administrative burden of conditionality controls for small farms.
Link to the text of the joint declaration of the eleven countries: https://bit.ly/30ptPA1 (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)