Single payment headache for EU legal eagles

DOCUMENTS being prepared by the European Commission to give a legal basis to the July decision to reform the Common Agricultural Policy are nearing completion in Brussels.

European Union officials, and civil servants from the 15 member states, have been meeting since the Council of Agricultural Ministers agreed to radically reform the CAP.

They are preparing legal texts to back up the reform a complicated, slow and tedious task; the draft regulation on the single farm payment alone has some 156 articles. Other texts cover rural development, cereals, rice, dried fodder. Drafting the two texts for milk one for levies, the other for the common organisation of the market is almost finalised. Dry fodder, cereals and rural development texts are completed, work continues on the single payment text. After Agriculture Ministers approve the texts, the Commission will draw up detailed rules.