News

Agriculture Ministers of the Member States of the European Union will meet on 28/01/2019 at the Council of Ministers in Brussels, the first one under the Romanian Presidency. The main focus of the discussion will be the package of CAP reform measures post 2020 - the regulation on the CAP strategic plans, the horizontal measure and the regulation on the common organization of the markets for agricultural products. The Commission will also report on developments in the protein crop sector in the EU. Other Council topics will include African Swine Fever (ASF), dual food quality and antimicrobial resistance.

On 23/01/2019, the Romanian Agriculture Minister Petre Daea presented to the members of the EP Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development the priorities of the Romanian Presidency in the field of agricultural policy. Romania took over the presidency of the EU Council at the beginning of January 2019 and will chair the Council until 30/06/2019. Daea said RO will seek maximum progress in the negotiation of the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy after 2020, but there is not enough time for negotiations, according to the RO Minister. In this context, Daea welcomed the Commission's proposal to strengthen subsidiarity for the Member States, the CAP should, in its view, be modernized and simplified. Daea also highlighted the need to achieve external convergence of direct payments in the EU Member States, support for generational change in agriculture and strengthen support for small farmers in mountain areas. Another Romanian priority will be the fight against the spread of African swine fever disease. Romania has faced the infection since 2014, and Daea is therefore determined to find an effective solution to the problem at EU level. In a debate with MEPs, Daea stressed the need to ensure alternatives to those plant protection products that are banned by European institutions. Farmers need alternatives to maintain a certain level of production and their own viability, according to the Romanian Agriculture Minister.

On 24/01/2019, the Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Phil Hogan discussed with COMAGRI members on the setting-up of a New Green Architecture under the CAP after 2020. The Commission presented the legislative proposals for the CAP post-2020 in June 2018, proposing abandoning the so-called greening rules and moving to the New Green Building of the CAP (more about this proposal here) and strengthening conditionality (some elements of greening measures should be retained). Furthermore, the Commission proposes that, in addition to reinforced cross-compliance, Member States should propose climate and environmental schemes (eco-schemes) in their CAP Strategies, the use of which should be voluntary for farmers. Eco-schemes should be an incentive for farmers to contribute to environmental and climate protection beyond the essential requirements of the Commission. According to Hogan, this system should be more beneficial to the environment than current greening. MEPs from the Greens have said that the Commission's efforts to strengthen environmental and climate protection are not ambitious enough, and a number of other MEPs are opposed to the promised simplification of the CAP. Hogan, in order to simplify the CAP, said that secondary legislation should be significantly simplified, which would result in fewer rules for farmers, which should be less detailed at the same time. More information is available here.

Berlin Green Week, the largest agricultural and food fair, was accompanied by protests involving up to 35,000 people this year. The main objectives of the protestors were to strengthen environmental and climate protection within the CAP post 2020, while limiting support for large farms in the region. According to one of the protest organizers, 3,300 agricultural enterprises and farms in Germany receive roughly 1 billion € each year, while the 200,000 smallest farms together earn only around 700,000 €. German agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner said that protests did not sufficiently reflect the sector's ability to feed the growing world population, it is not right to risk the decline in agricultural production, according to Klöckner. More information is available here.

On 23/01/2019, the European Parliament's Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (COMAGRI) formally adopted the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, as agreed by the EP and the Council on 19/12/2018 (as we have informed previously here). 38 MEPs voted in favour of the political agreement, 4 were against, 2 abstained. The vote follows the unanimous approval of the draft directive by the representatives of the Member States in the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) of 14/01/2019, followed by the approval of the EP plenary on 11-14 / 03/2019, shortly afterwards the agreement should be confirmed by the Council EU. EP rapporteur Paolo De Castro (IT, S&D) expressed confidence in the publication of the directive in the EU's Official Journal by the end of March 2019. More information is available here.