On Friday 18 December, the European Commission published recommendations for each Member State to help them draw up their strategic plans for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
According to the Commission, these recommendations are intended to help Member States implement the CAP beginning in 2023 and to ensure that their strategic plans “contribute ambitiously to the European Green Deal”, according to a press release.
These strategic plans will describe how each Member State will use the instruments of the CAP with the aim of achieving its specific objectives as well as those of the European Green Deal.
The recommendations are not legally binding in themselves. However, the Commission will approve CAP strategic plans before the implementation of the new CAP, once they have been formally submitted by Member States. During the approval process, the Commission will use the recommendations as an important reference document to evaluate the plans.
Janusz Wojciechowski, the European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, considered these recommendations to be “a crucial step in the transition towards improving the sustainability and resilience of our agricultural sector. I strongly encourage Member States to take these recommendations into account when drawing up their strategic plans for the CAP”.
The Commission will provide recommendations for each Member State on the basis of an analysis of their agricultural sector and rural areas.
This assessment has made it possible to identify the different levels of effort required for each objective and each Member State. On this basis, the Commission has presented concrete recommendations to Member States for the preparation of their CAP strategic plans. The Commission has drawn up recommendations for the 27 Member States, published as 27 Commission staff working documents accompanying the text of the Communication.
In their CAP strategic plans, Member States will draw up an intervention strategy, which should explain how they will use CAP instruments to achieve the objectives of the CAP, according to their local conditions and needs. This strategy will also address the objectives of the European Green Deal.
These recommendations are linked to the CAP’s nine specific objectives, which address environmental, social, and economic challenges, and to a cross-disciplinary objective on innovation. In addition, the recommendations take into account six objectives arising from the Farm to Fork and biodiversity strategies.
Furthermore, to achieve the 25% organic farming target, the Commission recommended that countries develop the necessary food supply chain structures, identify the local potential for organic production, promote the consumption of organic products, and ensure support for conversion to and maintenance of organic farming through rural development.
Pesticides. The Commission recommends that Member States promote the sustainable use of pesticides by ensuring the adoption of Integrated Pest Management.
By 2030, it plans to achieve: - a 50% reduction in the use and risks of pesticides; - a decrease of at least 20% in fertiliser use; - a 50% decrease in sales of antimicrobials used for farm animals and aquaculture.
The Commission’s goal is to reach a political agreement on the reformed CAP by spring 2021. Member States would then have until 1 January 2022 to submit their strategic plans. The Commission would have until 1 January 2023 to approve the plans, by which time the implementation of the new CAP would take place.
Link to the communication: https://bit.ly/2Ki7K1p Link to recommendations to Member States: http://bit.ly/3aneHZO (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)