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The European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA) in a letter called on the EP Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development to strengthen funding to support generational change in order to attract new farmers to the sector. CEJA also supported reinforcing the support for young farmers, from the Commission proposed 2% of the envelope for direct payments to a total of 4%. The definition of a young farmer should be clearly defined at the EU level. According to CEJA President Jannes Maes, the new strengthened conditionality within the newly proposed CAP is not the most efficient way to motivate farmers to use the available measures to support the environmental and climate protection - any agri-environmental policy must be set to reward farmers, who want to strengthen their environmental and climate protection activities or they have already done so, according to CEJA. CEJA has refused to renationalise the CAP, contrarily, the reinforcement of risk management tools to help young farmers in fluctuations at agricultural markets or in cases of extreme weather changes has been supported.

The largest European agricultural organization Copa and Cogeca has asked, through the President Thomas Magnusson, the Romanian Agriculture Minister Petre Daea to maintain the CAP budget for 2020 in real terms. According to Magnusson, the CAP should continue to be a common policy, it should be simplified, and one of the essential objectives should be to boost farmers' income. The basic income support for sustainability (one of the main components of direct payments, as proposed by the European Commission in June 2018) should be at least 60% according to Copa and Cogeca, environmental sustainability should not be happening at the expense of economic sustainability. Magnusson also said that emphasis should be placed on the high quality and added value of EU production that ensures the growth of the sector's competitiveness, finally he warned against the impact of hard Brexit on the EU agriculture.

Negotiations on the EU's Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) after 2020 under the Romanian Presidency have slowed down; the main problem seems to be the technical issues of the MFF. Given the small number of MFF working groups held since the beginning of January 2019, the MFF is not sufficiently prepared at the technical level, so there is a growing concern that it will not be possible to reach a MFF agreement by autumn 2019, according to Member States' representatives. Ministers will discuss the MFF on 19/02/2019 during the General Affairs Council.

Finland will take over the presidency of the EU Council after Romania on 01/07/2019, chairing the EU Council until 31/12/2019. Finland hopes to conclude an agreement on the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) after 2020 in autumn 2019 (preliminary during the summit on 17-18/10/2019), ideally followed by concluding a CAP agreement. However, the European Parliament elections (23-26/05/2019) and the planned exchange of Commissioners within the European Commission (01/11/2019) make the process of bargaining among institutions more complicated. Further delays may also occur due to the slowed down of negotiations under the Romanian Presidency.

On 01/02/2019, the Permanent Representatives Committee of the EU Member States approved the Romanian Presidency’s solutions on some of the points still unsolved in the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the transparency and sustainability of risk assessments in the EU food chain. These points included, among others, transparency in risk communication; form of verification studies; or the composition of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) Management Board. The Permanent Representatives Committee (Coreper I.) approved on 06/02/2019 the mandate for the 3rd trilogue of the EP, the EC and the Council, to be held on 11/02/2019. Both the Romanian Presidency and the European Commission, according to the representatives of these institutions, will try to reach a final compromise on the draft regulation. The Romanian presidency expects to reach the final agreement before the EP elections in May 2019.
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