Brussels, 05/04/2004 (Agence Europe) - On 31 March the Management Committee for Direct Payments successfully concluded its work on two Regulations regarding implementation of the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy within the deadline that the Commission had indicated to the Member States. A further step in the process of formalising the important decisions on CAP reform from June 2003 in Luxembourg has thus been taken. The vote is to be reconfirmed in the Management Committee on 14 April.. The main outstanding task for the Commission is to process "the second half" of Regulation 3 regarding coupled aids for cereals, beef and sheep meat premia and energy crops. The Commission underlines that it is important that Member States have the legal framework a, which will allow them to formally take the decisions with regard to how and which model they will choose to implement the reform. This decision has to be formally taken by 1 August 2004. Farmers will now have clear rules in this transition phase, where there has been considerable uncertainty with regard to transactions on the sale of land and situations with regard to renewals of lease contracts.
The Commission has decided to implement the reform byway of three Regulations: 1) covers the provisions concerning cross compliance, controls and modulation. The provisions with regard to cross compliance are one of the new key elements in the CAP reform, which make the future Single Farm Payment dependant on the farmers respecting public health, animal health, environmental and animal welfare, EU norms and good agricultural practice. The Regulation extends the use of the integrated administrative control system (IACS) to cover all payments and support under the CAP; 2) This Regulation embodies the key element in the reform, introducing a Single Farm Payment, where the payment will no longer be linked to production (decoupling). Payments will, however, only be paid in full if the above cross compliance provisions are respected. At the same time decoupled payments will mean that a major share of our support to agriculture is moved from the trade distorting classification under WTO rules (Amber Box) towards the minimal or non-trade distorting category (Green Box); 3) covers those areas of support, which in the future are still product specific, or where the Member States have the option to retain a certain element of support coupled in the future. This applies to animal premia (beef and sheep), where the concern with regard to the effect on production and decoupling has been most pronounced. The first part of Regulation 3 was already approved before Christmas 2003. The second part are planned for before the summer.