EU rural development "disaster zone"
It includes 118 Rural Development Programmes — and the European Commission says it expects only 10 of these to be approved by the end of this year. Another 15 or so are expected to be approved by the end of March, with the remaining 93 having to wait until May 1, 2015 for adoption.
“The bulk of RDPs will not be approved until 18 months or more after the start of the seven-year programming period to which they apply,” said EU agricultural policy expert Alan Matthews this week, on the capreform.eu blog.
He said rural development programming for 2014-2020 seems to be a “disaster zone”, and said the European Parliament should commission an expert group to look at ways of improving the programming.
“We cannot afford to spend two years at the beginning of every five or seven-year MFF [the EU’s Multiannual Financial Framework] debating the structure of the policy while farmers wait for the funds.”
In Ireland’s case, delays could postpone access by farmers to the GLAS scheme, TAMS grants, the Beef Data and Genomics Programme, LEADER, discussion groups and farm advice, the Organic Farming Scheme, collaborative farming, the willow and miscanthus bio-energy scheme, and local projects such as the Burren Farming for Conservation Scheme.
Ireland’s €4bn rural development programme from 2014 to 2020 also contains the disadvantaged payments scheme.
Many farmers had been hoping for early access to GLAS (the Green Low-carbon Agri-environment Scheme). Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney has anticipated that payments of some €20m would issue for GLAS in 2015, depending on numbers approved and date of approval — but that depends on an early approval of the new Irish rural development programme by the European Commission.
The Department of Agriculture has provided immediate and detailed replies to the Commission’s observations on the draft Irish scheme, but the Commission’s huge workload could ultimately leave farmers here waiting longer than expected for badly needed payments.
However, the news from Brussels is better on this week’s European Parliament and Council provisional agreement on the 2015 EU budget.
There are no farm spending cuts, and the CAP crisis reserve is left intact, despite emergency aid measures adopted due to Russia’s trde embargo. The annual crisis reserve is made up of deductions from farmers’ single payments, and will be returned to them if not needed in the event of an agri-market crisis.
Irish farmers have also recently learned that a €27.1m EU financial discipline re-imbursement for 2013 will be paid to them early in 2015.
