Proposal to reduce farmers’ EU payments

FIVE annual milk quota increases of 1% each in the run-up to scrapping quotas by April, 2015, were proposed this week by the European Commission.

Taking another 8% from single payments to farmers, in order to fund rural development, is also part of the “health check” reform of the CAP announced this week.

Currently, all farmers getting more than €5,000 in direct aid have their payments reduced by 5%, and the money is transferred into the EU’s rural development budget. The commission proposes to increase this rate to 13% by 2012. Additional cuts would be made for bigger farms (an extra 3% for farms getting more than €100,000 a year, 6% for those getting more than €200,000, and 9% for those receiving more than €300,000). The latter group would lose 22% of their single payments, to be siphoned into countryside-enhancing schemes, by 2012.