Brussels, 22/05/2008 (Agence Europe) - Following the presentation of the legislative proposals on the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) health check, the members of the European Parliament agriculture committee gave a somewhat mixed reaction to the European Commission's proposals.
Presenting her proposals, Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said, among other things, that, with regard to the new challenges facing agriculture, the EU had to step up a gear in combating climate change, water management, renewable energy and biodiversity, mainly through the rural development policy. “Therefore, I am particularly grateful to the Parliament for its suggestion of 'progressive modulation', which I have taken on board and adapted in the health check proposals,” she said.
Parliament rapporteur on the CAP health check Luis Manuel Capoulas Santos (PES, Portugal) said, “We think alike”. He spoke of the end to maintain the common agricultural policy, to safeguard agriculture as an economic policy and to guarantee adequate home-grown supplies of farm produce for the EU. Among the “positive aspects” of the proposals, he cited, the new Article 68 (flexibility granted to member states on aid for certain sectors) which “could even be exploited more”, the new allocation criteria for direct aid, enshrining the progressive modulation principle, and accepting the possibility of Community co-funding to set up a risk and crisis management system. He was critical of “the much too liberal tendency” of the proposals which “betray a lack of social sensitivity”, and “eliminate the smallest farmers without resolving the question of the ceiling for large holdings”. Capoulas Santos also felt that the supplementary modulation proposed by the Commission, with member states retaining all the money withheld, ran counter to solidarity within the EU.
On behalf of the EPP-ED group, German MEP Litz Goepel said he was satisfied that progressive modulation, as put forward by the EP in its own initiative report, had been taken up. He said he was keeping a close eye on the “danger that certain market instruments can represent”. For the Liberal group, Niels Busk (ALDE, Denmark) judged the Commission proposals “interesting”, while stressing that he would have liked a more market-oriented approach in the dairy sector. “If we continue to restrict milk production, we shall lose more market shares, even though producers have invested heavily and world demand is growing,” he stressed.
French PES members were quite critical. They rejected the proposals on “market deregulation and the abolition of intervention mechanisms” and felt that the health check did not respond to the new challenges of global warming, water and energy. The only positives, they felt, were the plans for progressive modulation, for allowing historic references to be abandoned and for using up to 10% of total direct aid from the 1st pillar to support disadvantages agricultural areas and sectors of production that were experiencing difficulties (sheep and goat farming, the dairy sector, fruit and vegetables, etc.) Bernadette Bourzai said these three instruments would allow CAP funding to be more fairly distributed across agricultural sectors, regions and farms, “but the Council still has to agree”.
“Your diagnosis is right, but the therapy does not suffice,” Friedrich Wilhelm Graefe zu Baringdorf (Greens/EFA) told the commissioner. “You have weakened the text rather than showing strength by supporting Parliament,” he went on, adding that the increase in milk quotas, which, he said, would reduce prices paid to producers, would produce “a belly-flop, not a soft landing”.
Greek MEP Daimanto Manolakou, speaking on behalf of the GUE/NGL group, said that the Commission proposals, particularly on full decoupling, “sound the death knell of small farmers”. “The EU will be increasingly dependent in the food sector, and we must take measures to constitute strategic stocks,” she said. Witold Tomczak (IND/DEM, Poland) pointed out that “large holdings, which, moreover, are no longer, strictly speaking, really agricultural holdings, will continue to receive most of the payments”, which was “not the right course if we want genuine rural development”.
The EP agriculture committee timetable on the health check is as follows: full exchange of views on 27 May, hearing of experts on 9 June, presentation by the rapporteur of his draft report on 14 July and adoption of the report on 7 October. The plenary session debate and vote are presently scheduled for the 17-20 November session in Strasbourg. Capoulas Santos underlined that the EP intended to finalise the “health check” this year, before the 2009 European elections. If it were to be unsuccessful in this, the reform might not be implemented before 2010 or 2011. (L.C.)