Many have talked about simplifying the CAP, but very few have taken action. Farm Europe welcomes the fact that the European Commissioner for Agriculture, Christophe Hansen, has set out to make real progress in this area, enabling the EU to turn its backs on the most damaging provisions to the credibility of the Common Agricultural Policy generating obvious and unnecessary over-administration in view of its performance.
The proposed simplification package will remedy the most obvious inconsistencies in the new performance framework introduced by the previous reform. The European Commission is sending a welcome signal that it intends to make regulations consistent with agronomy, the reality of farmers’ work and their practical needs in order to combine agricultural production and sustainability.
A new approach to national plans
With regard to the implementation of the CAP in the Member States, the Commission’s objective of focusing its added value on strategic changes to national plans, rather than discussing minor details or rejecting pragmatic proposals, as has been the case since 2023, is a step in the right direction. However, the Commission must fully play its role in ensuring that the ambitions of the NSPs are consistent with each other, by facilitating the most pragmatic implementation. This work is particularly necessary with regard to the GAECs. Some countries have over-complexified their implementation. For example, this is the case for a handful of Member States with regard to the implementation of the BCAE5, which heavily penalises certain sectors and threatens the integrity of the internal market, without any agronomic justification.
With regard to the small farmers scheme, Farm Europe calls for fair competition within the EU, not only between countries, but also between farmers, so that everyone can contribute to the objective of sustainability, regardless of the size of their farms. This tool should remain targeted at structures that are furthest from any administrative capacity and have very low market integration.
European crisis management is cheaper than at national level
Furthermore, Farm Europe has concerns about the risk of purely national management of agricultural crises. The establishment of crisis reserves by Member States sends an ambiguous signal, given the disorderly management through variable state aid authorised in response to Covid and the war in Ukraine. The measure proposed in this simplification package must not replace a strengthened European crisis reserve. To be truly effective, the management of severe crises can only be carried out at Community level, through a mechanism combining solidarity, incentives to strengthen risk management tools on farms and the takeover of these tools by Europe in the event of serious crises.
This is a question of economic effectiveness and efficiency in the use of public funds. According to Farm Europe’s estimates, a European crisis reserve of €2 billion costs five times less than separate national crisis reserves providing the same level of coverage. As the Draghi report pointed out, mutualisation and solidarity are pillars of European ambition, but also of budgetary pragmatism.
O artigo foi publicado originalmente em Farm Europe.
