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The EU’s new agriculture chief is pushing for extra of the bloc’s beneficiant subsidies to be doled out to low-income farmers fairly than large agribusinesses.
Christophe Hansen advised the Monetary Occasions that the seven-year €387bn Frequent Agricultural Coverage (CAP) ought to not reward the most important landowners and as an alternative deal with small farms, as discussions get underneath method on the bloc’s funds for the subsequent decade.
“Everyone knows that the CAP price range won’t be greater,” he mentioned. “There may be a variety of pressure as a result of we now have a variety of political priorities within the European Union so we have to higher goal the assist to these most in want.”
The brand new EU commissioner, who took workplace on December 1, mentioned his reform of CAP wouldn’t quantity to a “revolution” and wouldn’t transfer “solely” away from hectare-based funds. However altering the allocation would represent probably the most important overhaul within the historical past of the 62-year-old subsidy programme, which represents a 3rd of the bloc’s annual price range.
The most important farms within the bloc have historically obtained a lot of the funding, with an evaluation by the Institute for European Environmental Coverage, a Brussels-based think-tank, estimating about 80 per cent of the direct funds go to roughly 20 per cent of farms. Almost 6mn farmers and landowners obtained direct funds in 2022, in response to the European Fee.
Discussions across the subsequent EU multiannual price range, which is because of run from 2028, have shifted in the direction of a a lot higher deal with defence spending in latest months in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Donald Trump’s return to the White Home. The US president-elect has threatened to tug out of Nato if allies refuse to spend extra on the navy.
Any CAP discount will likely be met with fierce resistance from farmers who took to the streets of Brussels and different European capitals final 12 months to protest towards stringent environmental laws, crimson tape and unfair costs.
European Fee president Ursula von der Leyen in September vowed to make sure farmers obtain “honest and enough earnings” and protect farming amid monetary and environmental pressures.
Hansen, a centre-right Luxembourgish politician, mentioned the fee ought to encourage farmers to have a look at “various earnings” streams.
Whereas “producing and promoting a tomato” was good, “it makes you weak as a result of it’s your solely earnings”, he mentioned. Farmers might develop crops for biofuels or use their land for photo voltaic panels and different renewable vitality sources. Planting bushes that might be monetised as carbon credit must also be thought of, he mentioned.
A part of the fee’s response to the protests was to water down environmental requirements that farmers had been required to fulfill with a view to entry CAP assist, regardless of widespread outcry from inexperienced teams.
Von der Leyen on Tuesday is about to place ahead additional measures aimed toward serving to farmers promote their merchandise at a greater worth. The proposals, if agreed by EU lawmakers and member states, will make written contracts between farmers and meals corporations obligatory and permit extra co-operation between nationwide authorities to handle cross-border disputes.
Hansen mentioned he additionally meant to ease competitors guidelines to advertise merchandise from younger farmers and require higher transparency in retail pricing.
“Massive retailers use sure merchandise to draw the shoppers and so they use the weak place of the farmers within the provide chain,” he mentioned.
Christel Delberghe, director-general of the retail trade physique EuroCommerce, mentioned introducing stricter pricing guidelines would end in “inflation. What else?”
The revision of unfair buying and selling guidelines to cowl cross-border points might imply international locations attempt to apply their very own legal guidelines in different EU member states in violation of the only market, she added.
Looming over the discussions for the subsequent CAP price range is the prospect of Ukraine — a significant agricultural producer whose output is greater than that of France and Germany put collectively — becoming a member of the bloc.
Hansen mentioned this might be a “problem” nevertheless it might additionally assist Europe cut back its dependency on areas reminiscent of South America for protein crops reminiscent of soy.
“This might permit us to be a number one world participant in agriculture,” he mentioned.
Farming teams final week had been angered that the EU finally signed a free commerce take care of the Mercosur bloc of South American international locations that they’ve vehemently opposed.
Sectors together with beef, poultry, sugar and rice face “heightened dangers of market saturation and earnings loss as a result of inflow of low-cost merchandise from Mercosur international locations”, Copa Cogeca, the EU’s greatest farming foyer group, mentioned.
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