Fischer Boel takes major step to simplifying CAP

A MAJOR step in simplifying the complex Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), long regarded as a quagmire of red tape, has been taken by the European Commission.

It has adopted a streamlining proposal by Agriculture and Rural Development Commissioner Marian Fischer Boel for a single Common Market Organisation (CMO) for all agricultural products.

This will replace 21 different CMOs, covering everything from the beef and veal market to olive oil. It will bring under a single roof rules on everything from public intervention to marketing and quality standards.

The proposal will allow the Commission to repeal 41 Council legal acts containing more than 600 articles and replace them with a single regulation with less than 200. It will now be sent to the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament with the Commission hoping it will come into force in 2008.

Ms Fischer Boel said the proposal will slim down legislation in the farming sector, improve its transparency and make the policy more easily accessible.

The single CMO should make life easier first and foremost for administrators, reduce costs for the food industry and have useful knock-on effects for farmers. She said the result should be that the CAP is covered by just four main Council acts, those on the single CMO, the direct aid regime, rural development and the financing of the CAP.

“As I travel through Europe, meeting farmers and representatives of our member states, I often hear calls for less bureaucracy,” she said.

Ms Fischer Boel disclosed that the EU is currently trying to quantify the situation through a survey in five member states of the administrative burden of applying the direct payments scheme.