EU’s budget proposals ‘threaten livelihoods’ by freezing payments
The EU proposes freezing agriculture to €371.7 billion for the set seven-year period. This works out at about €55bn a year, still roughly 40% of the EU’s annual €140bn per year spend. However, the farming budget will be fixed, while other sectors will rise by 5% annually, and some monies are to be redirected to favour eastern European farmers.
This proposed allocation for the farming budget is roughly in line with predictions suggested by Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney at last week’s IFA Beef Conference in Tullamore, Co Offaly. He also reminded farmers this draft proposal would not be a fait accompli and that he would continue to work in tandem with his European allies to seek the best possible result for Irish farmers.
The budget proposals must now be approved unanimously by EU governments — a process expected to take at least 18 months. Most analysts predict the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) will be agreed during Ireland’s agriculture presidency in 2013.
Britain, Sweden and others had called for deep cuts to the CAP budget after 2013, but a majority of EU governments, led by France, want farm spending to remain at least stable after the policy is reformed in 2014.
IFA president John Bryan expressed disappointment that the EU opted against index-linking the direct farm payments, which were also excluded from the overall 5% increase which the budget proposes to give other non-farming sectors.
Mr Bryan called on Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Mr Coveney to engage with other member states to ensure funding for other programmes does not come from the existing CAP payments to farmers.
He said: “The funding that Ireland receives through the CAP is of vital importance in under-pinning agricultural production, supporting farm incomes and driving growth in the agri-food sector and wider rural economy.”
Mr Bryan said the €1.6bn allocation for Ireland under the CAP is redistributed across the economy by farmers buying locally provided inputs, labour, goods and services. The CAP also pays farmers for non-core activities such as environmental protection, landscape management, high-quality food and animal health standards.
Irish Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn said she managed to earmark €4.5bn for agri-food research, which would help Irish farmers and food producers to grow their exports, and would help make the rural economy greener and more competitive.
ICMSA president Jackie Cahill said the proposals will make Ireland a net contributor much earlier than expected. He criticised the attacks on the Single Farm Payment, and voiced his opposition to a growing push towards a substantial recoupled payment for the suckler cow herds.
He said: “On the crucial issue of the Single Farm Payment and based on the figures, the first attack comes from the fact that value of the funding will be eroded over time because of inflation. The second attack lies in the proposal to slice off up to 30% of the monies for the so-called ‘greening’, in what amounts to a virtual REPS-type obligation on farmers, in addition to possible more stringent cross compliance.
“Furthermore, with the attack on the historic basis of Single Farm Payments and a consequent move towards averaging of payments, the third attack will arise where we could see a reduction in the SFPs paid to active farmers.”
Mr Cahill said Mr Coveney should be fully conscious that farmers would not subsidise an expansion in the beef herd by accepting lower Single Farm Payments. He said this issue was a “a firm marker” for the ICMSA.
ICSA president Gabriel Gilmartin accepted that the EU’s €371.7bn seven-year farming allocation was “as much as could be expected given the prevailing economic backdrop and competing interests for European funding”.
Mr Gilmartin said: “At least we have certainty and there will be some relief that the CAP escaped from potential cuts, particularly as it seemed that Pillar 2 was under considerable threat in recent weeks.”
Around 30% of farmers’ direct payments will be made conditional on them meeting “a range of environmentally sound practices” in areas such as climate change and bio-diversity protection, acc-ording to the budget plan.
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