EU set to review agricultural policy

A ROOT and branch review of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), will be launched by the European Commission in Brussels today.

Agriculture and Rural Development Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has repeatedly said over the past year that the Health Check for the €44 billion programme is not going to be a fundamental reform. But she has also indicated that cross-compliance will be back on the table and that its principles will not be watered down.

“These are essential if we want to keep public backing for the CAP. However, we could make the system work rather more smoothly,” she said.

A particular question will be how to prepare for the end of the milk quota system, due in 2015. There is speculation that a 2% milk quota increase for 2008-09, starting next April, will be proposed.

Ms Fischer Boel said the milk quota system is entering its last few years of life. “Milk quotas simply do not fit in with the competitive, market-oriented farming that the CAP now seeks to encourage,” she said.

Rural development will also be on the Health Check agenda. A significant increase in the rate of compulsory modulation before 2013 is expected.

Reports in Brussels indicate that the commission wants to devote more money to rural development and less to direct subsidies, and that it is anxious to put a limit of payments made to the EU’s largest farms.