Coveney says CAP is tight but “doable”
In response to Dáil questioning by Fianna Fáil deputy Michael Moynihan, the Minister said he does not believe that the multi-annual financial framework (MFF) — Europe’s overall financial budget, of which agriculture is the largest single recipient — will be agreed on schedule for December 1, 2012.
Nonetheless, he said that the MFF can be finalised by February or March 2013, coinciding with Ireland’s six-month presidency of the EU’s agriculture commission. Mr Coveney says the timeline is tight, but “doable”, for a CAP to be agreed upon by June 2013 and implemented before January 1, 2014.
Mr Coveney said: “If the detail of CAP is not agreed next year, it will be impossible to see a new CAP taking effect from the beginning of 2014. There will be only six months to put the new regulations and rules in place and get the information out to farmers. There will be huge pressure on our presidency to get this done, and this pressure will come from the Commission and other member states.
“I hope that in February or March of next year we will be able to finalise the MFF, and in May or early June we will see CAP coming to a final conclusion. Many of the final agreed CAP proposals will have been predicted at this stage by the Commission and it will be ready to go with the new rules and regulations that need to be rolled out in the following six months for a new CAP to begin at the start of 2014. The timetable is tight but I believe it is doable.”
Deputy Moynihan challenged the tightness of the timeline, noting that it was unlikely that the multi-annual budget could be agreed in February or March, followed by concluding the CAP in May. “Surely there is not time for the system to be ready to go in Ireland by January 1, 2014. This timescale seems almost impossible at this stage,” he said.
Mr Coveney said the timetable is tight, but not impossible. He accepted that the stakeholders might have to look at a contingency plan, with the Commission looking at extending implementation of a new CAP by a year and some type of continuation measure for 2014.
