European Farm Law Reform Raked by Green Groups

BRUSSELS, Belgium, January 22, 2003 (ENS) - The European Commission today released draft legislation for major reform of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), including proposals to make farm support more environmentally responsive.

Neither farmers nor environmental groups were satisfied with the proposal. "Everybody in Europe would be worse off," said agriculture association Copa-Cogeca. "Only the EU's major trading partners would benefit."

Farm, Upper Teesdale, England (Photo courtesy Freefoto)

EU Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler said, "This reform has one objective: Making sense of farm subsidies for our farmers, consumers and taxpayers. We need reforms, and we need to decide now. Our plans will give farmers a clear perspective to plan ahead."

Farmers will no longer be forced to produce at a loss in order to receive support, said Fischler. "They will have the opportunity to maximize their income on the market. Studies show that farm incomes would improve with the reforms. A wait and see approach would be damaging for farmers' interests. It would widen the gap between the farm policy and society's expectations."

Society is ready to support farming, said the commissioner, "provided farmers give people what they want - safe food, animal welfare and a healthy environment."

Key environment related elements of the package are:

• DECOUPLING: The Commission is still supporting this core environmental component of the reform. Farm aid would be decoupled from production and converted into farm income single payments. A proposal to cap payments to individual farms at €300,000 has been dropped.

• DEGRESSION: Once farm income payments are introduced, the Commission had proposed reducing them by three percent per year from 2004 for farms receiving more than €5,000 a year. Following a deal between EU leaders last October, payments will reduce by only one percent per year, starting in 2007.

• COMPULSORY MODULATION: The intention remains to transfer money cut from farm income payments to the CAP's "second pillar" to provide funding for environmental and rural development schemes. However, there would now be less cash to transfer, due to the lower rate of degression.

• CROSS-COMPLIANCE: The Commission still proposes that compliance with a range of environmental, animal welfare and food safety legislation, as well as keeping land in good condition, are pre-requisites for aid. Green groups remain unimpressed and accuse the EU of "paying farmers not to break the law."

• FARM AUDITS: The Commission originally proposed that all farms receiving more than €5,000 per year should undergo farm audits, but has now raised the threshold to €15,000. According to green think-tank the Institute for European Environmental Policy, this would reduce the number of farms affected from 30 percent to just seven percent.

• AGRI-ENVIRONMENT FUNDING: The Commission has abandoned last summer's proposal to increase the aid intensity of funding schemes designed to protect the environment by 10 percentage points from the current 75 percent in economically disadvantaged areas and 50 percent in other areas.

• ANIMAL WELFARE IMPROVEMENTS: The proposal includes support for farmers who enter into commitments for at least five years to improve the welfare of their farm animals and which go "beyond usual good animal husbandry practice." Support will be payable annually on the basis of the additional costs and income foregone arising from such commitments, with annual payment levels of maximum €500 per livestock unit.

Tractor works a French farm (Photo courtesy Réseau Agriculture)

Cross compliance - the conditions a farmer has to meet to receive the money - is "weak," says BirdLife, "and limited to merely not breaking the law. This measure could have delivered higher environmental standards across all farmland and is a missed opportunity."

Commenting on the new package, Sue Armstrong Brown, senior Agriculture Officer, BirdLife International said "This deal is bad for everyone, farmers and environmentalists alike.Without real commitment to rural development, we will continue to see massive declines in farmland wildlife. Its only redeeming feature, and this is also under threat, is the decoupling of farm support from productivity."

Read the the CAP legislative proposal at: http://europa.eu.int/comm/agriculture/mtr/memo_en.pdf

See CAP questions and answers by clicking here.

{Published in cooperation with ENDS Environment Daily, Europe's choice for environmental news. Environmental Data Services Ltd, London. Email: envdaily@ends.co.uk}