CAP fund cut ‘unthinkable’
French farm minister Stéphane Travert and Ireland’s Michael Creed have joined the Spanish and Portuguese ministers in an alliance against funding cuts proposed for the CAP from 2021 to 2027.
“We can’t go from €408 billion to €364 billion… this isn’t right at a time when we are asking for more from our farmers,” said Travert.
France is by far the largest beneficiary of the Common Agriculture Policy. “For Stephane Travert, such a drastic, massive and blind cut is simply unthinkable,” said the ministry in a statement.
Mr Creed said he was extremely disappointed by the EU’s proposal to cut funding, when farm families are required to play a vital role in protection and enhancement of the environment, as well as food production to the highest standards in the world, while facing market uncertainty due to Brexit.
“Many farm families rely on the CAP for virtually their entire income,” he said.
Meanwhile, Irish CAP expert Alan Matthews said the EU budget proposal indicates the EU Commission wants to protect direct payments to farmers, at the expense of severe cuts to rural development expenditure.
His analysis in the capreform.eu blog goes behind the Commission’s claim that the proposal is to reduce the CAP by roughly 5%.
“However, another way of looking at the numbers suggests that the cut is more like 15% overall in real terms over the period of the next Multiannual Financial Framework, but with a much bigger cut in Pillar 2 rural development expenditure of around 26%. Direct payments will be maintained constant in nominal terms,” says Matthews.
In his analysis of the EU budget proposals, he considers factors such as inflation, and the change from 28 to 27 member states.
He said the commission’s claim that the CAP budget will only be cut 5% seems based on nominal terms.
“But spending trends are better captured by comparing proposed commitments in 2027 and 2020. This comparison suggests that the overall CAP budget will fall by around 15%. Direct payments will be maintained in nominal terms but rural development payments will fall by one-quarter.”
“This slow squeeze on Pillar 2 while Pillar 1 direct payments are relatively protected does not square with the Commission’s rhetoric that the next CAP will require a higher level of environmental and climate ambition,” said Mr Matthews, professor emeritus of European agricultural policy at Trinity College, Dublin.
He said higher environmental and climate ambition can be driven by stronger regulation, such as new conditionality attached to direct payments. “But it is hard to see that the Commission intends to do much more than fold the existing cross-compliance and greening requirements into the new conditionality, without necessarily raising the level of ambition.”
According to the Farm Europe group of EU rural economy experts, if member states and the European Parliament accept the budget proposals, CAP spending would fall 11.2% by 2027, and direct payments by 15%. The agricultural budget cut is more than the full Brexit bill, according to Farm Europe, which says farmers where the share of direct payments is highest, like Denmark and the Czech Republic, may suffer most.
