On Tuesday 13 February, the European Commission adopted the regulation providing for a derogation, in 2024, from the application of the standard relating to good agricultural and environmental conditions of land (GAEC) standard 8.
This is a partial exemption from rules on land lying fallow, a demand made by protesting farmers.
According to the text published in the Official Journal of the EU, farmers will be able to receive aid from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) by devoting a minimum of 4% of arable land at farm level to non-productive areas and features, including land lying fallow and/or to nitrogen-fixing crops, and/or to catch crops.
Catch crops and nitrogen-fixing crops are grown without the use of plant protection products. Member States must use a weighting factor of 1 for catch crops.
The regulation comes into force on Wednesday 14 February and applies retroactively from 1 January 2024.
The final act adopted also allows Member States to modify their eco-regimes supporting non-productive areas in order to take account of the other reference level in the context of GAEC 8 cross-compliance. A simple notification to the European Commission will suffice to immediately update the eco-regimes concerned.
Member States wishing to apply the derogation at national level must notify the Commission within 15 days of the entry into force of the regulation so that farmers can be informed as soon as possible.
Farmers will be “subject to fewer restrictions on how they use arable land, and this will limit income losses, while guaranteeing certain environmental benefits”, the Commission specifies.
At the end of January, the Commission had initially proposed a threshold of 7% instead of the 4% finally adopted. However, the lowering of the threshold from 7% to 4% had irritated certain Member States, which spoke out against the project (see EUROPE 13348/13).
Link to text: https://aeur.eu/f/aub (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)