On the morning of Wednesday 21 October, the agriculture ministers of the EU countries reached a ‘general approach’ on the texts amending the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
This position was achieved by a comfortable qualified majority. Only Lithuania voted against, while Romania, Bulgaria and Latvia indicated that they would abstain at the time of the vote.
“We have set a milestone towards a systemic change in the CAP. It is a balanced compromise. In addition, the CAP budget will be stabilised”, said German Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner, who chaired the EU Council meeting. Green architecture should not be watered down, the minister added at a press conference just before 5:00 am.
Janusz Wojciechowski, Commissioner for Agriculture, considered the agreement to be a good working basis for the negotiations between the three institutions due to start in November.
The debates, which lasted from Monday to Wednesday morning, focused on eco-schemes, which are premiums paid to farmers to support their participation in more demanding environmental programmes.
These eco-schemes will, according to the compromise, be compulsory: each State will have to devote at least 20% of EU direct aid to them. The German Presidency of the EU Council has therefore managed to salvage this point, which is of great importance to it. Eastern European countries and Italy, in particular, have long rejected the compulsory nature and minimum amount allocated to eco-schemes, fearing that they would lose funds if not enough farmers participated in environmental programmes.
In order to convince them, a two-year ‘learning phase’ (2023 and 2024) is planned under these eco-schemes (a pilot phase). The new CAP will be introduced in 2023, after a two-year transitional period (2021 and 2022).
Above all, “flexibilities” to reduce the 20% percentage in some countries like Austria, which already have a strong environmental policy under the second pillar of the CAP (rural development), have been accepted. This will require the country in question to devote more than 30% of the funds under the second pillar to climate and environmental measures.
The environmental programmes covered by the eco-schemes “include practices such as high-precision farming, agroforestry and organic farming, but states will be free to designate their own instruments according to their needs”, an EU Council statement specifies.
“We certainly want our farmers to be competitive throughout the EU and for export, but above all we want a European (environmental) standard that is not based on the lowest common denominator”, commented Ms Klöckner. France also welcomed the mandatory nature of the Directive “to avoid any distortion of competition”.
Concessions have been granted to Eastern European countries, allowing transitional national aid to continue until 2022, before being reduced: 50% in 2023, 45% in 2024, 40% in 2025, 35% in 2026 and 30% in 2027.
As regards coupled support, the compromise reached provides for the consolidation of coupled aid at 15% of the direct payments envelope.
Supporting a French initiative, a majority of countries wanted coupled support to promote the development of protein-rich plants so as to strengthen the EU’s protein autonomy.
In addition, the compromise provides for a franchise of €2,000 for financial discipline (reduction in direct aid) and a simplified control system in favour of small farmers.
The agreement also provides for the extension of the authorisations for planting vines until 2040 (2050 according to the European Parliament). Finally, with regard to sanctions, France has obtained commitments to ensure that beneficiaries are recognised as having a ‘right to make mistakes’.
On permanent grassland, it is foreseen that the ratio (in relation to agricultural area) of permanent grassland should not decrease by more than 5% compared to the reference years 2015 or 2018.
Capping and degressivity of aid remain options.
Various reactions. “It’s a dark day for the environment. The transition to ecological agriculture now lies fallow”, reacted the European Environmental Bureau (EEB). In general, NGOs are very disappointed with the compromise reached.
On the professional side, the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA) welcomes the fact that decision-makers have taken steps to clarify their position on CAP reform. It regrets that the ministers did not raise their ambitions regarding the objective of generational renewal.
This new CAP “is not perfect”, but “may allow farmers and cooperatives to move forward, to invest in their production while becoming greener”, reacted the agricultural organisations and cooperatives of the EU (Copa-Cogeca).
Link to the compromise text on strategic plans agreed at EU Council level: https://bit.ly/3khGDAB (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)