Agriculture spending

By Dave Keating 

One of the most important aspects of the budget talks will be what happens to agriculture funding. In the latest compromise draft, put forward by European Council President Herman van Rompuy, funding for agriculture would be cut by €14.5 billion, a 6% cut from the European Commission's proposal. Farmers warn that this could have a devastating effect on European agriculture.

This afternoon, farmers organisation Copa-Cogeca outlined what it believes is at stake. “Agriculture spending, which is less than 1% of EU expenditure, has been falling continuously for many years while other countries like the US, China and Brazil are investing strongly in their agricultural sector to maintain competitiveness,” said the organisation's Christian Pees.

“The [Van Rompuy] draft would be a further cut in agriculture expenditure, on top of the EU Commission proposals which already reduce the CAP budget by 10% in real terms.” The compromise, he said, would mean a cut of 17% in real terms.

But the CAP has some strong defenders among the member states. France is expected to oppose any major cuts to the agricultural budget. The Commission has also stood by its original proposal for CAP reduction. Dacian Ciolos, the European commissioner for agriculture, has criticised the Van Rompuy proposal, saying that it “goes against our efforts to make CAP fairer, greener and more efficient”.

European Commission President José Manual Barroso said yesterday: “Europe needs a strong, up-to-date, competitive, innovative and green CAP more than ever, to meet the European public's demands for food supplies and a healthy lifestyle, but also to help combat climate change and contribute to the sustainable management of our natural resources,” he said. “Have we really thought about what would happen if there were no common agriculture policy - if we had market fragmentation in Europe as a result of 27 different national agricultural policies?”

Green concerns

Environmental campaigners fear the cuts proposed by Van Rompuy would derail efforts to 'green the CAP' during 2014-20. The CAP is divided into two pillars – the first containing only direct payments to farmers, and the second pillar based on rural development, which contains payments because of environmental and land-stewardship measures.

The cuts proposed by Van Rompuy hit the second pillar hardest. His plan would see cuts in direct payments to farmers of 5.8% but it would cut rural development funds by 9.3%, even though that first pillar is three times as large as the second pillar.

Environmental groups fear the new CAP could be even less green that the existing one. They fear that member states will discard the greening measures that the Commission has tried to insert into the first pillar because of the budget cuts, and what environment measures are left in the second pillar will be underfunded.

“If agriculture ministers understand that the overall CAP money is decreased, they will fight even more strongly against greening measures,” said Marco Contiero of Greenpeace.

But those who have traditionally complained about the cost of the CAP are eager to trim the programme down.

Original Article Here