Brussels, 18/12/2006 (Agence Europe) - As foreseen, the European Commission adopted, on Monday 18 December, a proposal establishing a single common market organisation (CMO) for all agricultural products to replace the current 21 CMOs (EUROPE 9326). The proposal, which aims to establish a single management committee, will be sticking to its purely technical aim to amend the current tools (intervention, private storage, import quotas, export refunds), the Commission assured. The single CMO allows over 40 legislative acts to be repealed and the number of legal articles in regulations to be slimmed down from 600 to fewer than 200. The proposal is put to the Council and to the Parliament, and the Commission hopes it will take effect in 2008.
During a press conference, Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel confirmed the proposal was part of the work to achieve “technical simplification” of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and that it was not the Commission's intention to change the current instruments, market management instruments in particular. “Simplification of a political nature” will be examined in the “Health Check” in 2008-2009 for reform of CAP and mid-term review of the financial framework 2007-2013. Ms Fischer Boel said on this occasion that the Commission planned to “put everything on the table”: - the future of dairy quotas, set aside and intervention, the possibility of increasing the level of aid decoupling (breaking the link between subsidies and the level and volume of production) as well as modulation (reduction of direct aid to the benefit of rural development policies); - and the future of CAP “after 2013”. According to Ms Fischer Boel, it is essential to send a “clear message” from 2008-2009 to farmers on policies that will be in force after 2013. With sufficient warning, farmers will be able to adjust to the new challenges ahead, the Commissioner said. In response to questions put to her, she said it was difficult to imagine that farm spending after 2013 would remain at the same level. She went on to specify that agricultural spending was already on the decline during the financial period 2007-2013. Taking inflation into account (a higher rate than at the time of the European Council's 2002 decision on placing a ceiling on spending until 2013), as well as the integration of spending for Romania and Bulgaria (in the current ceiling) and the financial discipline mechanism (reduction of agricultural payments should this ceiling be surpassed), there will be a 7% reduction of direct subsidies in 2013, the Commissioner said. “One thing is certain: the simpler it is, the better equipped the CAP will be to play its role in the EU's rural economy”. (lc)