E.U. Set to Approve Future Common Agricultural Policy

The European Union is set to approve a new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) this week after the European Parliament and Council reached a polit­i­cal agree­ment on Friday.

The European Commission said the new CAP, which comes into force in January 2023 and runs through 2027, will be fairer, more envi­ron­men­tally con­scious and flex­i­ble.

Once it has been for­mally approved by the E.U. Agricultural Council, it will be up to each mem­ber state to pre­pare a strate­gic plan to imple­ment the CAP over the next five years.

E.U. offi­cials said that this dif­fer­ent approach to the CAP will allow local pol­i­cy­mak­ers to tai­lor the plan to the unique needs of their respec­tive coun­tries.

“The new CAP com­bines higher envi­ron­men­tal, cli­mate and ani­mal wel­fare ambi­tions with a fairer dis­tri­b­u­tion of pay­ments, espe­cially to small and medium-sized fam­ily farms as well as young farm­ers,” Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski said.

“I now count on mem­ber states to develop ambi­tious CAP strate­gic plans that are in line with our objec­tives and that will pro­vide the right tools to sup­port our farm­ers in the tran­si­tion to a sus­tain­able food sys­tem,” he added.

The European Commission empha­sized that this CAP will be more sup­port­ive of work­ers than pre­vi­ous ones.

Any CAP ben­e­fi­ciary will have to respect European labor laws to get the fund­ing. Member states will also be required to redis­trib­ute 10 per­cent of the income sup­port ben­e­fits to small farm­ers. A fur­ther three per­cent of each mem­ber state’s bud­get is ear­marked for young farm­ers, defined as under the age of 40.

The new CAP will also pro­vide more strict envi­ron­men­tal require­ments for farm­ers who would like to receive fund­ing. The European Commission said the goal of this is to have the CAP com­ple­ment the European Green Deal and Farm to Fork Strategy.

The CAP bud­get will ​“con­tribute sig­nif­i­cantly” to the E.U.’s over­all cli­mate spend­ing, stip­u­lat­ing that mem­ber states must allo­cate at least 25 per­cent of their strate­gic plan bud­gets to ecoschemes, which will reward farm­ers for organic farm­ing prac­tices, agroe­col­ogy and inte­grated pest man­age­ment.

“The agree­ment reached today [Friday] marks the start of a real shift in how we prac­tice agri­cul­ture in Europe,” said Frans Timmermans, the first vice pres­i­dent of the European Commission.

“In the next years, we will pro­tect wet- and peat­lands, ded­i­cate more farm­land to bio­di­ver­sity, boost organic farm­ing, open up new income sources for farm­ers via car­bon farm­ing and begin to redress inequal­i­ties in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of income sup­port,” he added.

• European Commission