On Wednesday 7 October, the French Minister for Overseas Territories, Sébastien Lecornu, the Minister for Agriculture, Julien Denormandie, and the State Secretary for European Affairs, Clément Beaune, announced that they had written to Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski to demand that the budget for the Programme of Options Specifically Relating to Remoteness and Insularity (POSEI) be maintained for the 2021-2027 period. The Spanish and Portuguese authorities are taking the same approach.
The POSEI, which applies the first pillar of the common agricultural policy (CAP) to the outermost regions (ORs), sets objectives to improve the supply of essential agricultural products to the ORs, maintaining the historical export sectors and improving local self-sufficiency by supporting diversified production. It benefits the French, Spanish and Portuguese outermost regions.
The European Commission had announced that a 3.9% reduction in the POSEI budget was under consideration for the 2021-2027 period. “This decline is not acceptable to the French government, as the context of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 has once again highlighted the more fundamental and more complex need in these remote regions to produce locally in order to guarantee security of supply and ensure food sovereignty”, explains the French government.
In a statement, MEP Stéphane Bijoux (Renew Europe, France) stressed “the need to unite all our forces to defend the family farming model on the island of Reunion and the French Overseas Territories”. He says: “we must protect our farmers and breeders. Europe needs to be a strong partner in order to achieve our common goal of food self-sufficiency together”.
On the initiative of Younous Omarjee (GUE/NGL, France), chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Regional Development, MEPs from different political backgrounds gathered on Wednesday in front of the European Parliament with a banner reading ‘NO POSEI CUTS’. “France needs to step up to the plate to convince other countries and make this issue a red line”, Mr Omarjee said. He called on agricultural stakeholders in the ORs to “maintain maximum pressure” on the French government.
Decrease of 26 million euros per year. The current POSEI budget is approximately €653 million per year (€278.4 million for France, €106.2 million for Portugal and €268.4 million for Spain). The Commission has proposed a reduction of €26 million per year for the ORs of the three countries concerned.
At the last Agriculture Council on 21 September, Spain, supported by France, Portugal and Greece, called for the programme’s funding to be maintained at the same level.
EU agriculture ministers hope to reach a ‘general approach’ on the post-2020 CAP on 20 October.
“The German Presidency of the Council of the EU still needs to be convinced”, a source told the European Parliament, recalling that the European Parliament had voted to keep the next POSEI envelope at the same level.
Link to the French government’s letter to the Commissioner: https://bit.ly/3npR7jf (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)