Air views on ‘health check’
From the Irish point of view it’s the most controversial idea raised in the Common Agricultural Policy “health check”.
As much consultation with as many people as possible on all the ideas in the “health check” is the aim of European Agriculture and Rural Development Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel.
Her officials have promised to take all contributions received from the public by January 15 into account in their assessment of the feasibility and impact of various policies which might emerge from the final political agreement on the health check, expected in 12 months time.
Anyone can go to the http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/healthcheck/consultation/questionnaire_en.pdf website, to answer questions on what they think of health check proposals.
They are invited to suggest how the Single Payment System can be simplified, and to give their view on the proposed flat rate single payment, rather than the current historically based payment. They are asked what would be the potential outcome of maintaining cross-compliance as it is. Irish farmers will also be interested in answering the question, “How effective do you think capping will be in addressing the problem of the uneven distribution of payments between the farmers?”
“In the context that a large number of farmers receive significantly low amount of payments, in many cases even below the administrative costs, what potential impacts do you see in the option of adopting a minimum level in payments?” is another interesting question.
Tillage farmers might like to give the Commission their views on now best to maintain safety-net intervention for cereals, and what to do with set-aside.
Dairy farmers’ views are sought on the following questions. In the light of new market opportunities do you consider that the quota system is still fulfilling its stated objectives? What benefits and what risks do you see from doing nothing and simply letting the quota regime expire in 2015? What kind of effects do you see emerging in the case of a gradual phasing-out of quotas through increasing their annual level? What would you propose as an alternative or accompanying transition measure?
Anyone who can find some spare time over Christmas to go on the internet and answer this questionnaire will be contributing useful grass-roots opinion to the commission. This will help to balance , which is, of course, bombarded incessantly by generously funded lobbyists whose job it is to protect powerful vested interests from EU policy changes.
For farmers especially, it is hard to find time to make a submission. But if they don’t, only other voices will be heard.
That is evident from Commissioner Boel’s personal website, where she also welcomed views on the CAP health check, from everyone who has an opinion — so that changes can be made that genuinely reflect what people want.
She hoped to see a lively debate, and got just that. There were only 12 reactions, on average, to her first 15 website entries. That jumped to 48 reactions to her most recent entry, in which she announced the health check. Unfortunately, 27 of these comments are calling for genetically modified foods to be banned — even though this topic does not arise at all in the health check. They are a spill-over from the deluge of reactions — totaling 270 — to Ms Boel’s previous website comments, nearly all of which seem to have come from Greenpeace members, all supporting a ban on genetically modified foods. The lesson for farmers and others who make their livings in their food industry is that if they don’t make their views heard at EU level, the vacuum will very quickly be filled by those who have strong opinions about the CAP and enough time on their hands to express them.
So use the Christmas break to take part in the EU decision-making process. The good news is that the http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/healthcheck/consultation/questionnaire_en.pdf website is specifically designed for people working within the Common Agricultural Policy, to find out how they will be affected, when health check decisions are taken in a year’s time.
Don’t wait until 2009 to complain about how those decisions have adversely affected you; have your say now.
