Big two want CAP budget status quo

The agriculture ministers of Germany and France said they want to keep the EU farming budget at its current level, after they met in Berlin last Wednesday.

Germany’s Ilse Aigner and France’s Stéphane Le Foll said they “support the Commission’s proposal to maintain the agricultural budget to the nominal level of 2013 for the period 2014-2020.”

Germany is the largest contributor to the EU budget, and France is the largest beneficiary from the farming budget, which makes up about 40% of the EU’s total budget.

The announcement is well timed ahead of this week’s summit meeting in Brussels to work on the 2014-2020 EU budget.

Referring to calls from member states such as Britain and Poland to make cuts to agriculture, the two ministers expressed their opposition to the proposal by some member states to reduce direct payment support for farm incomes.

They said they may agree to some convergence between member states in the level of direct payments to farmers, provided it was “reasonable and progressive”.

The European Commission proposal on convergence to reduce income gaps between farmers in Western and Eastern Europe could reduce French farmer funding by as much as 7%.

Aigner and Le Foll said they supported a strong CAP for growth, employment, environment and innovation in Europe’s rural areas, and for EU participation in the global food balance.

They support the Commission’s drive for greener farming, but asked for flexible policies on this, and “an agriculturally sustainable use of areas of ecological interest”.

The two ministers called on the EU to protect in an “aggressive way” its agricultural interests in the face of globalisation.