Brussels, 10/06/2008 (Agence Europe) - At a hearing on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) “health check” held by the European Parliament agriculture committee on Monday 9 June, a number of speakers expressed the view that the measures proposed by the European Commission to respond to new challenges, such as climate change, water resources and the loss of biodiversity, and market instability are inadequate. Most experts and MEPs taking part in the hearing were critical of the Commission's proposal to progressively increase levies on direct aid to farmers and shift the monies thus gathered to rural development programmes.
“Food price rises are a cause of concern to society, and increase our political responsibility,” stated European Parliament rapporteur on the CAP health check Luis Manuel Capoulas Santos (PES, Portugal), who will present his draft report at the start of July. Allan Buckwell (Country Land & Business Association, United Kingdom) said, “The real new challenge is to maintain Europe's contribution to world food security by producing with less impact on the environment”. Ioannis Tsiforos, representing the Panhellenic Confederation of Unions of Agricultural Co-operatives, felt that the complexity of the problems posed calls for a panopoly of policies to keep European agriculture sustainable, starting with climate impact studies for the EU's various farming regions.
Speaking about the aid model, Jesús González Regidor, of Madrid University, proposed a new “territorial flat rate per new entitlement”, varying with the agricultural and rural area where the farmland is located. This, he said, would enhance the EU's territorial cohesion and hence the CAP's social legitimacy. Bernhard Osterburg, of Von Thünen Rural Studies Institute, Braunschweig, felt that the system proposed by the Commission (phasing out historic references and moving towards a new, more uniform, per-hectare model) would not make it possible to apply the CAP more uniformly across the EU, given the diversity of situations in different member states. Instead, he suggested retaining the status quo until 2013, when the simplified system of per-hectare payments put in place by most member states which have joined the EU since 2004 will expire. Joseph Daul (EPP-ED, France) felt that total “regionalisation” of aid would be fraught with risks: “If we give the money to regional authorities, then we risk privileging electoral in-fighting and funding wild hamster protection rather than our farming apparatus. We cannot gamble the CAP on a regional election every five years,” he emphasised.
Lutz Goepel (EPP-ED) highlighted the merits of certain German regions, which “encourage green farming with per-hectare premiums, whatever the crop”. Gert Karkov of the Danish Farmers' Union, who backed replacing historic reference periods with a per-hectare system of premiums varying from region to region, also stressed the need to continue decoupling subsidies from specific crops. “Coupled aids should be only short-term solutions to a given societal problem in a specific area,” he said. He was supported by Kyösti Virrankoski (ALDE, Finland), who said that farmers should be rewarded for rendering services to society - if they were not, then European agriculture would be weakened. By contrast, Friedrich Wilhelm Graefe zu Baringdorf (Greens/EFA, Germany) advocated introducing a coupled premium to protect the environment in sectors such as sheep and goat production, cotton and tobacco.
Growth in food demand worldwide, rises in food price and the current instability on agricultural markets have renewed debate on intervention mechanisms. The Commission proposes the abolition of intervention for durum wheat, rice and pork. Daniel Perrin of the Association for the Development of International Exchange of Food and Agricultural Products and Techniques favoured retaining today's butter and milk powder intervention mechanisms, which he said had helped stabilise markets without encouraging excessive surpluses. For the cereals sector, he felt that current instruments should evolve towards a safety net system. He objected to the Commission's proposed tendering system on the grounds that it would drive down prices. “It's also a question of food security. Community stocks have come in very useful recently and may be a geostrategic asset,” Perrin replied to Agriculture Committee Chairman Neil Parish (EPP-ED, UK), who was asking about the usefulness of maintaining intervention instruments in a period of rising prices. “The European Commission's vision does not reflect the reality of how the food crisis affects agriculture. You don't need to be an expert to see that we must produce more to feed everyone,” said Janusz Wojciechowski (UEN, Poland). Andrzej Czyzewski of Poznan University stressed the need to put in place mutual insurance for more than just harvests, as is already done in the USA, Canada and Australia. (L.C./transl.rt)