News

On 04/03/2019, the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA), a body preparing the work of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council, in particular on CAP-related issues, consisting of officials from the Permanent Representations or the Ministries of the Member States responsible for the CAP, discussed the CAP Strategic Plans after 2020. The discussion was based on the discussion paper that the Romanian Presidency sent on 01/03/2019 (here), but the debate on Article 15 of the Commission's proposal for a CAP reduction on direct payments was not included in the program. Results of the meetings of the SCA representatives are as follows:

Article 4, definition of permanent grassland:
Definition under Regulation Omnibus was supported by CZ, LU, HU, BG, LT, GR, ES, FI, CY;
Definition under the Commission’s proposal was supported by LV, KD, SK, AT, PT.

Article 4, definition of young farmer:
According to the opinion of the most Member States, the Commission's training and skills requirement should be voluntary rather than mandatory. On the contrary, ES, AT and IE supported it being mandatory.

Article 4, definition of real farmer:
According to the opinion of the most Member States, the definition of a real farmer should be introduced at the discretion of the Member States. Belgium has agreed to the Commission's proposal for the mandatory introduction of this definition.

Article 26, redistributive payments:
The voluntary introduction of redistributive payments was rejected by ES and PT.

Article 68, investment:
The Commission’s proposal that Member States would limit aid to a maximum rate of 75% of the eligible costs (up to 100 % for some types of investment) was not supported by LU, DE, SE, AT, DE and BE. According to these Member States, the 75% rate is too high, they supported 40 %.

Emergency reserve:
The Commission's proposal to remove the EUR 2,000 limit was supported by BE, DK, SK, DE, FR, SE, EE, NL, LU, CZ;
The Commission's proposal was rejected by SI, IT, ES, AT, PT, IE, PL, LT, BG, CY, GR, LV, MT, HU.

On 19/02/2019, the EP's political coordinators decided that the EP reports on individual parts of the CAP legislative package would only be voted on by the AGRI Committee and not in the EP plenary. The European Parliament's position on the CAP after 2020 will be adopted by the new European Parliament, the elections will take place on 23-26/05/2019. The AGRI Committee has provisionally set dates for voting on individual reports. The vote on the EP report on the Common Market Organization (rapporteur Eric Andrieu, FR, S&D) should be held on 01/04/2019; the vote on the EP report on the Strategic Plan of the CAP (rapporteur: Esther Herranz García, ES, EPP) is scheduled for 02/04/2019; the vote on the EP report on Horizontal issues (rapporteur Ulrike Müller, DE, ALDE) is scheduled for 08/04/2019. The dates have not yet been confirmed, one of the options is to include AGRI's next meeting on 09/04/2019.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in early March 2019 supported the maintenance of the budget for the Common Agricultural Policy. According to Morawiecki, the CAP is one of the key aspects of the entire Polish economy; therefore, PL disagrees with the proposed budget decline. The new CAP, according to the Polish Prime Minister, should provide enhanced support for small farmers who are able to invest in specialized agricultural production that result in high quality products with higher added value.

Romania plans to introduce new national legislation against speculation with agricultural land. The aim of the new legislation is to prevent the purchase of agricultural land by foreign companies, thus facilitating access to land for Romanian citizens. Similar legislation has already been introduced for example in Poland; it is the Polish legislation that should be a model for the Romanian one. Romania plans a ban on land sale during the first 15 years after the purchase, in order to force those who buy the land to actually farm it. At the same time, buyers will have to be Romanian residents, for at least 3 years before the planned land purchase. However, this condition may be in contradiction with the position of the European Commission, which on 12/10/2017 published a set of instruments and the possibilities for Member States to legally comply with EU law to limit the purchase of agricultural land by foreign investors. According to the Commission's recommendation, states can limit the size of the land that can be bought, may put pre-emption rights on the land for a particular group of candidates, or benefit from state intervention. However, according to the European Commission's guidelines, it is not possible to introduce discriminatory measures, among which the Commission included the residence requirements.

A total of 23% of the Romanian population is employed in the agricultural sector (the EU average of employed population in agriculture is 4.2%), with an average of 92% of Romanian farms of the size under 5 hectares - it is a total of 3.1 million farms. Half of Romanian farms with a surface of more than 50 hectares manage about 50% of all agricultural land in RO. The motivation for foreign companies to buy land in Romania is in particular the good quality and affordability of agricultural land, which is currently, estimated less than half of the area of agricultural land in RO to be in the hands of foreign investors. Last year, for example, a company based in the United Arab Emirates bought a Romanian company with a total area of 57,000 hectares.

French President Emmanuel Macron, in an open letter to European citizens of 04/03/2019, responded to questions about climate and social security for EU citizens. In the area of agricultural and food policy, Macron supported the achievement of zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 and a reduction in the volume of pesticides used in agriculture in the EU by half by the end of 2025. The reduction of pesticide use by 50% by 2025 is one of the national French targets, but the farmers respond to the FR plan disagreeably. According to French farmers, the reduction in the volume of pesticides used in France has disadvantages for French producers compared to producers from other European countries where so ambitious targets have not yet been set. The introduction of a plan at the EU level would therefore be a solution. According to Macron, the European Climate Bank should also be set up to finance the transition to environmental practices in the EU. As for the food policy, Macron supported the strengthening of controls by the European Food Safety Authorities and the strengthening of the implementation of independent assessments of substances dangerous to the environment and health.

French Minister of Agriculture Didier Guillaume also reiterated France's disagreement from the last week with the proposed budget cut for the CAP.

More information is available here.