The CAP gets leaner, but not greener

Overall CAP spending to fall by 13%.

Government leaders rolled up their sleeves during the summit and got into the mucky business of reforming the Common Agricultural Policy. Or rather, they ensured during the budget negotiations that CAP reform would be severely constrained. In their summit conclusions they issued directions that will inhibit efforts to make the CAP more environmentally friendly and to reward good environmental practice.

Overall, CAP spending for 2014-20 is being reduced by 13% compared to the 2007-13 period, and that headline figure allowed the leaders of northern European countries to return home claiming a budget victory. But in reality the savings are most unlikely to come from reducing direct payments to farmers. The conclusions agreed by the summit include permission for member states to fund direct payments to farmers with up to 25% of the money allocated through the CAP for rural development, which rewards environmental stewardship.

The most likely outcome – and it depends on the practice adopted by each national government – is that direct payments to farmers will be maintained, but the comparatively smaller part of CAP funds that goes toward environmental improvements will be drastically reduced.

“This budget deal would kill the greening of the CAP,” said Ariel Brunner of campaign group BirdLife Europe. He described the budget deal as a “complete betrayal of European citizens on behalf of the usual vested interests”.

The budget deal also dictates to farm ministers how they must proceed with the talks over reforms to the CAP. The government leaders have also interfered on the issue of cross-compliance – the attempt to make payments from the CAP conditional on good environmental practice. The Commission had proposed making a part of direct payments dependent on three green conditons: crop rotation, permanent pasture, and setting aside land for biodiversity.

While the national leaders kept the proposed amount of CAP funding that will be dependent on good environmental practices at 30%, they specified that member states must be given “a clearly defined flexibility…relating to the choice of equivalent greening measures”. This would allow member states to give loose definitions of measures that are “equivalent” to the three measures proposed by the Commission.

The Commission has proposed that farmers would have to set aside 7% of their arable land for biodiversity in order to meet the condition of setting aside land for biodiversity and qualify for 30% of funding. The summit conclusions say that this requirement must be “implemented in ways that do not require the land in question to be taken out of production and that avoids unjustified losses”. So the land could continue to be used to grow crops, defeating the intended environmental purpose.

Dacian Ciolos, the European commissioner for agriculture, said on Friday (8 February) that the Commission’s initial proposal had “enabled us to justify a significant budget, providing better value for money”. He added: “I regret in particular the cuts in the rural development budget, which will mean less investment and, thus, less growth.”

Privately, some Commission officials are concerned that the summit’s conclusions on the CAP might delegitimise its reform, which was meant to justify maintaining the direct payment system by adding an environmental component.

That approach appears to have failed. One high-ranking Commission official said on Monday (11 February) that, in hindsight, it had been a mistake to try to bring about environmental improvements through the system of CAP payments, because the vested interests involved were too powerful. Incentives were not working. Direct legislation would be needed. He said this mistake should not be repeated for the next long-term budget.