News

On 01/03/2021, Austria submitted a proposal to strengthen the implementation of national legislation governing the working conditions of employees under the new CAP, which was submitted to the Special Committee on Agriculture. According to the Austrian proposal, the strengthening of implementation could take place based on a two-stage procedure - first, the role of the Agricultural Advisory Services should be strengthened (these should reflect the guidelines of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work); attention should be focused on assessing compliance and implementation of the rules. The evaluation should take place three years after the implementation of the new CAP rules. The evaluation report should then be discussed at the level of representatives of the European institutions to assess whether strengthening the role of Counselling Services has helped to implement and comply with the rules governing working conditions in individual EU Member States. The Austrian proposal, which was submitted in response to the proposals to introduce so-called social conditionality, i.e., making direct payments conditional on compliance with working conditions rules (at EU level), was also supported by BE, BG, HR, CY, CZ, FI, EL, HU, LV, MT, RO, and SK, during the discussion it was also supported by NL and EE. However, some big states, including France and Spain, are more inclined to a European solution to social conditionality.

The European institutions continue to hold separate trialogues on the various parts of the CAP reform package, namely the Strategic Plans, the Horizontal Issues, and the Common Market Organization. As part of the negotiations on Horizontal Issues, the institutions are currently leading a trialogue on the issue of monitoring compliance with the rules of enhanced cross compliance. According to the European Parliament, the number of farmers who will be checked for compliance with cross-compliance rules should be increased to 5%. However, the Council insists on maintaining the status quo, i.e., controlling 1% of farmers, to avoid unnecessary administrative burdens. Representatives of the European Parliament have therefore proposed a compromise of 2.5%, but the Council does not yet have a mandate from EU Member States to increase the number of controls to more than 1%, so negotiations are lengthy and complicated, according to European Parliament representatives.

On 04/03/2021, the European Commission published a new study to evaluate information tools under the CAP. The aim of the evaluation is to assess the relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency and added value of CAP information measures. According to the Commission, the current instruments have been successful in raising awareness and understanding of the CAP, and their objectives are therefore largely achieved. The study will contribute to the overall evaluation of the current CAP, which should be completed and published in autumn 2021.
More information is available here.

On 01/03/2021, the European Commission launched a public consultation on the Contingency Plan for food security, which is part of the Farm to Fork strategy. The initiative aims to assess the resilience of the food chain and subsequently develop a contingency plan for food supply and food security. The Commission states that "this contingency plan would seek to improve preparation for any type of crisis that could significantly affect food security in the EU, and coordination across the policy areas relevant to the food system (agriculture, fisheries, food safety, workforce, health, transport issues, etc.). This includes establishing a food crisis response mechanism to be coordinated by the Commission and involving Member States, as well as a set of broad guidelines and recommendations to improve coordination at EU and Member States level, informed by the outcomes of the work of the forum."
The consultation is available here.

The EP Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (COMAGRI) adopted its opinion on the EU Biodiversity Strategy on 04/03/2021. COMAGRI supported an ambitious strategy to halt the loss of biodiversity in the European Union but called for a cumulative impact assessment to be carried out so that individual measures and targets could be set correctly. The impact assessment should be based on scientific bases, the impacts of the strategy on social and economic sustainability should be assessed. In a new opinion, committee members supported the development and approval of more new, affordable, and effective alternatives to chemical pesticides, and said that the CAP strategic plans should promote biodiversity, protect pollinators, and reduce fertilizer use. Farmers who implement sustainable plant protection practices should be encouraged and compensated. Sustainability must not only be achieved in the field of environment and climate, COMAGRI also emphasizes economic sustainability. However, according to the COMAGRI opinion, 10% of land should be set aside from production, as proposed by the Commission (non-production elements, landscape elements, buffer zones, drawbridges). In its opinion, COMAGRI also supported the strengthening of the role of forests in the context of efforts to halt the loss of biodiversity in the EU. The opinion was adopted by COMAGRI by 35 votes to 8, with 5 abstentions. The opinion will now be given to the EP's Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (COMENVI), which has key competences for the biodiversity strategy. COMENVI will vote on its opinion on 22/04/2021.
More information is available here.