News

The European Commission will launch two new observatories to monitor the situation on the wine and fruit and vegetable market. The new observatories will start to operate in 2019, complementing already existing observatories to monitor the situation on the market for milk, meat, sugar and cereals, oil crops and protein crops.
More information is available here.

With insects declining at an alarming rate, the German environment ministry wants an action plan to protect them before the end of the year. But farmers are feeling ignored in the process and are calling for more environmental protection incentives. Read more

On 19/02/2019, political coordinators for agricultural policy of the European Parliament debated further steps to deal with the different parts of the Commission's legislative proposal for the CAP within the European Parliament. The coordinators agreed that the draft EP reports on these legislative proposals should be voted only within the EP Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development rather than at the EP plenary. The vote in the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI) should take place in the first half of April 2019, the dates of the Committee meetings are preliminarily set on 02/04/2019 and 08/04/2019. MEPs in the AGRI Committee have therefore three additional weeks to discuss the compromise amendments to the individual reports (Strategic plans, Horizontal issues, Common Market Organization); the European Parliament's position should consequently be decided after the EP elections that are due 23-26/05/2019.

Last week, Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs said that one of the main topics in the debates on the new Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) after 2020 is to fund both new and existing EU priorities. According to Rinkēvičs, providing funding for defence, migration, external border protection or research support (the so-called new priorities) is essential, but to achieve full external convergence of CAP direct payments after 2020 is for Latvia equally important in terms of priorities. For Latvia, direct payments are a major incentive for economic development, addressing demographic challenges, or ensuring a fair standard of living for farmers. Achieving external convergence will therefore continue to be one of the main priorities for Latvia in the negotiations on the CAP and the MFF after 2020.

Environmental NGOs BirldLife Europe, EEB and WWF welcomed the outcome of the vote on the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy in the EP Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI), which took place on 14/02/2019 (as we have informed previously here). Representatives of BirldLife said that the current CAP invests public funds into a policy that promotes environmental destruction while helping to develop intensive agriculture. According to WWF representatives, the result of the ENVI vote should be a clear signal for the other Parliament’s Committees and Institutions involved in the debate on the reform of the CAP beyond 2020, including the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development. The European Environment Bureau (EEB) also welcomed the outcome of the vote, according to its representatives; the current support system strengthens climate change and environmental degradation, causing negative impacts on rural development, public health and the ability to produce healthy and safe food.