News

The European People’s Party - the largest party in the European Parliament adopted a position paper outlining the EPP’s vision on the future of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Christian Schmidt, Germany’s Minister of Food and Agriculture, and Michel Dantin MEP co-authored the report and spearheaded the work as co-chairs of the EPP’s Ad hoc Working Group on the Future of the CAP. The position paper is available here.

The European Commission has agreed to allow national governments to make advance payments to farmers in order to help those affected by the difficult climatic conditions in the first part of 2017. The changes will benefit ten member states (Belgium, Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Portugal and Finland), the most affected by the adverse climatic conditions. More information

Web users worldwide can now view weather and crop conditions in near real-time across the whole of the EU, thanks to the JRC MARS Explorer, a pioneering new e-service from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. The data displayed are based on meteorological station data and crop simulations, originating from the MARS Crop Yield Forecasting System. Lear more.

The Commission's agricultural and rural development department published today a market brief on the topic, describing the current state of risk management in European agriculture. Among the existing tools, the EU's common agricultural policy proposes a series of instruments to manage risks of different type and scale. However one of the main obstacles is the low uptake of these varied tools by farmers. More information

Commissioner Barnier hold a press release on key developments and outcomes of the third round of the Brexit negotiations. There was a progress on the question of a Common Travel Area, the most important issues related to trade issues remain unsolved and depending on the position of the UK, how to proceed with Brexit. Full speech available here.