Annecy, 23/09/2008 (Agence Europe) - At the end of the debate between European agricultural ministers on Tuesday 23 September in Annecy, Michel Barnier summed matters up and stated: “Everybody around the table said that they needed to keep a common agricultural policy to meet food, ecology, regional and sanitary challenges, even if there were differing opinions on the contents, tools and budget for this policy”. The French minister chaired this informal meeting on the common agricultural policy (CAP) after 2013 and said that this debate is “early but not premature” especially because “we don't all agree on this subject”. Barnier added: “We want a political plan before the budget debate, which will come in good time” (towards 2010).
Mr Barnier drew some orientations for the future from these discussions, which will continue under the Czech Presidency (first half of 2009): European agriculture will have to meet many challenges (high prices of certain raw agricultural products and energy, questions regarding certain production models that are poorly adapted to environmental constraints); the need to produce more, produce better and produce everywhere (in Europe and Africa); our agricultural policy should be flexible and dynamic, to better respond to market fluctuation (and health risks and climate complications); the future CAP will have to encourage farmers to innovate and adopt new more environmentally-friendly production techniques; diversity of our European agriculture and rural life has to be preserved.
Discussion showed that around 20 EU countries want to keep a strong CAP, with market regulation instruments and a budget, to preserve the food, farming and a regional model that characterises Europe. Michel Barnier said that these countries “want to preserve the human factor, central to the CAP”. Several countries (economically liberal leaning), such as the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Estonia, want to keep the CAP but put the market at the centre of it. Another group of countries want to put the environment and ecology at the centre of the CAP. Many ministers from new EU member states are seeking a fairer distribution of aid as from 2014.
Mariann Fischer Boel admits that direct aid to farmers will be reduced
Mariann Fischer Boel, Commissioner for Agriculture, said that “there are a lot of open questions about the CAP after 2013”: how much money will be available, “the fact is that there are enormous pressures on the European Union budget and there's fierce competition between different spending priorities”; to what extent can we leave it up to the market to run our farming? “I don't think we should move large sums into a general insurance scheme against income loss”. Fischer Boel said that decoupled payments (aid that is not linked to production volumes) remain the most efficient way of supporting farmers' incomes; how can resources between the 1st pillar (aid and market spending) and the 2nd pillar (rural development) be best shared out? According to the commissioner, two camps at the Council are battling it out in favour of one or other of the pillars. She said: “Whatever the size of the CAP budget may be after 2013, I find it hard to imagine that we will give a smaller slice of the cake to objectives which we naturally associate with rural development policy. The opposite seems much more likely”; to what extent will be want to target CAP money in future? The commissioner believes that direct payments are not sufficiently targetted, whilst funding from the 2nd pillar is more so. It is therefore necessary to find a balance between simplicity and accuracy of policies at different levels (farmers, regions, member states), which the commissioner admitted would definitely be “difficult to do”.
During the debate, the Austrian minister, Josef Pröll, expressed concern about a work document on the financial framework, in which the European Commission said that it no longer considers agriculture a priority theme. Pröll said the “CAP should not be renationalised” and called for a balance between the 1st and 2nd pillars. The German minister, Horst Seehofer, said: “We should avoid reinventing the wheel but continue on the way to reform”. He also aid that they should leave it up to farmers to decide on their investments. The Finnish minister Sirkka Liisa Anttila declared that the CAP should, “ensure decent incomes for farmers and remain a common policy”. Farming should also be maintained in deprived areas. The Lithuanian minister highlighted innovation (biomass, 2nd generation biofuels) and deemed GMOs “inevitable”. Helir-Valdor Seeder, the Estonian minister, said that the CAP required deep reform. The British delegation said that essential objectives were: increasing market orientation; diversified and quality products; - rewarding farmers for the services rendered to the environment. The classic market management instruments have to be kept and the 1st pillar has to be strong, was the substance of the call from Spanish MEP Elena Espinosa. For Gerda Verburg of the Netherlands, the role of the CAP in supporting revenue had to be phased out. Priority had to be given to innovation and complementary payments for what was done to help the environment. Luca Zaia, the Italian minister suggested “putting production back at the heart of the CAP. The CAP budget must remain high and go to farmers”. He argued for decoupling, but stressed that it should not become a dogma. Partial coupling can be justified in some cases, Zaia said. The priority for Polish Agriculture Minister Marek Sawicki was bringing aid for the new EU member states into line with that for old member states. “We back unified decoupling of aid in the EU,” but on the basis of historic references (amounts produced during a set period), he said. The Hungarian minister pointed out an imbalance between support for vegetable products (higher) and that for animal products. He also felt that the 1st pillar should be strengthened to help disadvantaged areas. A “stable and sufficient” 1st pillar was called for by Belgian MEP Sabine Laruelle. “Yes, our CAP has a future,” said Swedish minister Eskil Erlandsson, arguing the case of the “agricultural entrepreneur”, and for the budget to be shifted from the 1st to the 2nd pillar for some services (which the market cannot provide) to preserve biodiversity.
Speaking to press, Michel Barnier pointed out that agriculture was Europe's only really “pooled” budget. “If the same were to be done for other policies, such as research and energy, very large European budgets would result. For research, “I have calculated” that that would mean a budget four times higher than the CAP if there was the same degree of mutualisation.
Priorities and proposal from young farmers
The European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA) was also meeting at Annecy until Tuesday 23 September and adopted a declaration on priorities for keeping the CAP after 2013. The CEJA shares the European Parliament's position: the CAP should in future make new generations of agriculture its priority. After a description of the challenges facing European agriculture (world agricultural production is expected to double by 2050, high rise in non-food agricultural products, such as energy and biomaterials, food safety, regional maintenance, volatility of increasing prices etc), the declaration listed five CAP post-2013 objectives: ensuring viability of new generations of farmers: helping the young to live in a way that it both liveable and viable and help them to implement their business plans; ensure food (safe, diversified and quality) is accessible to all European citizens; maintain sustainable farming in Europe and preserve the environment (closer link between research institutions and agricultural sector); contribute to economic and social viability of the regions; promote the European agricultural model.
The CEJA finally suggests a series of renewed instruments for CAP after 2013: - innovative market management tools in the context of the 1st pillar of CAP (direct aid and market spending) which would act as a safety net for producers and allow risks and agricultural crises to be managed; - an observatory for market control; - the obligation of indicating the origin of all farm products and ingredients of processed products; - strengthened controls on imported products; - upkeep of farms in less favoured areas and compensation for competitive handicaps between regions; - promotion of regional and local products; - complementary support (CAP, regional policy, enterprise and industry, research, etc.) for remunerating all services provided by agricultural activity to the society in terms of spatial planning, preservation of biodiversity, landscape protection and the fight against climate change; - improvement of the system to support the establishment of young people (raising the Community ceiling, facilitating access to credits by strengthening interest-free loans); - a real policy to promote the farming profession and support for lifelong learning for farmers; - and Community exchange programmes between young European farmers.
The European Coordination Via Campesina for its part recommends: - keeping milk quotas after 2015; - no annual increase of dairy quotas; - not giving up market regulation replacing this by “risk management” made up of semi-private insurance (the food price crisis shows that, without regulation, there is no food supply security or price stability); - return to decoupling of direct payments to production (the association calls for the reintroduction of production-linked premiums); - placing a ceiling on direct payments for each farm and according to its agricultural activity; - introducing a minimum lump sum for the very small farms (of which there are millions in Romania, Poland, Italy, etc.) - and more help to farm production in difficulty. (L.C./transl. rh/rt/jl)