Farming escapes limbo with the CAP reform agreement
José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, has thanked Taoiseach Enda Kenny, and congratulated him for “excellent co-operation” and “impressive work and results” during Ireland’s six-month presidency of the council of Europe — despite the Anglo tapes, which Mr Kenny said had undermined Ireland’s reputation and damaged democracy (the verdict, also, of German chancellor, Angela Merkel).
Mr Barroso said none of the deals made during the Irish presidency were more important than last week’s agreement on the seven-year EU budget, but he made special mention of the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policy agreements brokered by Simon Coveney.
He said the Irish presidency had clear priorities, political commitment, technical knowledge and drive, and a safe pair of hands to manage it all.
The EU back-slapping is understandable — because the first Lithuanian presidency, which began last Monday, could not be expected to manage a heavy schedule of EU leadership.
The baton will pass next January to Greece, which has enough on its plate, including a deadline later this week to assure eurozone leaders, and the International Monetary Fund, it can meet its financial bailout conditions.
If Ireland hadn’t progressed CAP reform, and Lithuania didn’t either, it would have been a very hot potato for Greece, whose farmers have been getting the highest EU payments, averaging €560 per hectare.
Instead, last week’s political agreement ensures they will be cut back, while, at the other extreme, farmers in Latvia, who averaged less than €90 per hectare, will gain.
It will still be 2015 before any farmer’s payments change, because the EU can only move slowly, and last week’s political agreement between the commission, the council (member states), and the European Parliament was but the first stage of the CAP reform process.
Stage two was yesterday’s European Parliament vote on the EU’s budget for 2014-2020.
Then, the commission, council, and the European Parliament must agree on a few controversial issues that had to await EU budget decisions.
These include caps on direct payments to big farms, transferring money to, and from, national budgets for direct payments to rural-development programmes; and allocation of national envelopes for direct payments and rural development, and rates of co-financing in rural development.
Member states have indicated they may accept mandatory reduction of direct payment over €150,000.
Ireland’s Agriculture Minister, Simon Coveney, explained why agriculture ministers did not progress discussion of these subjects.
“You can’t seriously expect ministers [to make decisions] that are contrary to the decisions heads of state had made months earlier,” he said,
“But we have made decisions on practically everything else here.”
After agreement on those issues, the way is clear for agreement on CAP legislative texts in the Parliament and the Council — and the process of implementation can begin, hopefully on Jan 1, 2014.
When the political deal is converted into implementing rules, the CAP reform could look somewhat different from the picture emerging from Brussels last week.
Meanwhile, 2014 will be a transition year of unchanged direct payments.
Certain annual elements of the CAP, such as agri-environment payments, should also continue uninterrupted in 2014.
Member states are asked to work on their multi-annual rural development programmes, which should be approved early next year.
By a remarkable coincidence, last week’s political agreement was concluded 10 years to the day after ministers struck a deal on the last major agricultural policy reform — the Fischer package of 2003, which introduced the decoupled single farm payment, scaled back market support, and increased rural development funding.
The package of 2013 is unlikely to be as earth-shattering, but probably opens the way for an entirely different kind of CAP after another 10 years, in 2023.
