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Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Phil Hogan will continue to try to achieve the easiest cross-border transport of goods between the EU and Great Britain (UK), even in the case of the UK's leaving the EU with no deal. Even in such case, cooperation in many areas related to logistics, market, hygiene regulations and the necessary certification of all products will be needed. A separate category will be food falling under the category of perishable products. In recent months, the EU has been intensively discussing with the UK the issue of maintaining the possibility of exporting EU agricultural products to the UK to the greatest extent possible. Commissioner Hogan wants to retain World Trade Organization (WTO) tariffs set for Brexit with no deal (e.g. 42% for cheddar and up to 70% for milk) as part of logistics and food certification cooperation. If the UK decides to unilaterally reduce or totally abolish these rates in order to facilitate the import of food from the EU, the same procedure should be applied to the remaining WTO members.
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Agriculture and Rural Development Commissioner Phil Hogan will meet Australia and New Zealand ministers next week to move ahead with negotiations on joint agri-food trade. An important part of the negotiations will be the export of beef - it will be necessary to find a balance in beef trade between the USA, Australia, Uruguay and the EU. The US calls for a greater share of the EU beef market, without which the US might withdraw from the EU's trade agreement. That is something the EU will not risk. Therefore, Hogan is trying to set the situation suitable for all parties. Another subject will be renaming Australian products that imitate original EU products (such as Prosecco, Feta Cheese, and others). In total, there are about 1,500 products; their renaming has been for now refused by Australia.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published data on the movement of world food commodity prices on 07/02/2019. According to FAO, world prices rose by 1.8% on average in January 2019 compared to December 2018. Compared to January 2018, those prices are however 2.2% lower. Prices of milk (+7.2%), skimmed milk powder (+16.5%), vegetable oils (+4.3%) and sugar (+1.3%) increased most. By increasing the consumption of sugar by Brazilian ethanol producers, the quantity of sugar for export was limited; the sugar market also supported higher crude oil prices. Cereal prices stagnated in December 2018, but they were 7.3% higher than in 2017. Meat prices are stable since December 2018. More information is available here

The European Parliament's Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) proposes, according to the preliminary compromise proposal on the issue of capping, mandatory capping of direct payments exceeding EUR 60 000 while rejecting the possibility of deducting labour costs per employee. According to ENVI, the capping should not apply to climate and environmental schemes and support for young farmers. The revenue generated should be used primarily to finance climate and environmental schemes (so-called eco-schemes), or Member States should have the chance to move these funds from the First to the Second Pillar of the CAP, without this transfer being counted to the maximum limit for transfers between Pillars set by the European Commission.

The Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) discussed the CAP on 04/02/2019 in Brussels. According to preliminary information, it is very unlikely that Romania would succeed in reaching a general agreement on the CAP in the EU Council before the European Parliament elections (23-26/05/2019). SCA's discussion focused primarily on setting the definition of a real farmer, the age limit for young farmers, and agricultural advisory services. Member States are now inconsistent in the opinion on potential raising the age limit for young farmers to 45 years. For some of them, raising the age limit does not give a clear impulse to motivate new farmers to enter the sector. The next SCA meeting will take place on 11/02/2019.