MEPs will debate and vote tomorrow on Common Agriculture Policy reforms. Reforms will be delivered following debate on Tuesday and Wednesday in the EU Parliament, and they are guaranteed to cause some ire when MEPs make known their desires.

image expired

However, in an unprecedented turn of events, the reforms caused bitter resentment yesterday even before legislators themselves knew for sure what they would entail. This was because the parliament Agriculture Committee (Comagri) had been granted extra powers to revisit its proposals, unveiled in January, with a view to paring away the number of amendments to reforms, in a bid to facilitate voting by the whole Parliament later in the week.

Under Parliament regulations, for proposals attracting over 50 amendments, only those amendments with ten percent of committee members' support will go through for the final vote. However, the CAP reform policy has over 300 such amendments. On Friday, Comagri was given permission to hold an 'extraordinary meeting,' scheduled for Monday, ahead of the full vote to re-examine reforms.

Although even on Monday it looked as though the Parliament Agriculture Committee had been granted license to revisit the policy, Comagri Chair Paolo Di Castro effected a U-turn late in the day, bowing to pressure over calls that such a move would have been "undemocratic."

This is the first CAP reform process in which the European Parliament has had equal input, and, as CAP accounts for the largest chunk of EU spending, decisions over its delivery for the next budget period (2014-2020) have been hotly contested and the subject of much controversy.

Drastically curtailing the Comagri meeting on Monday, Di Castro said plans to allow agriculture committee MEPs a second look at policy reforms had attracted complaints from "environmentalists and trade unions" and added that he did not want his committee to be seen as undemocratic or unwilling to debate reform before the Parliament plenary.  

In January, the Agriculture Committee voted on reform proposals, discussing amendments to the EU Commission's draft tabled by MEPs. When results of the voting were unveiled, Green MEPs criticised the "shambolic and rushed voting procedure" and lamented the outcomes.

Green MEP and co-chair of the parliament agriculture committee José Bové said at the time, "MEPs have voted for the CAP to plough ahead unsustainably. The outcome would be a CAP that is even worse for the environment, and just as unfair as, the current model. This vote is confirmation, if ever any was needed, that the EP agriculture committee is totally out of touch with public opinion and the massive challenges we face."  

Once Parliament has reached an agreement over reform proposals, negotiations with individual Member States will begin. However, the package, which should be ready for implementation by the end of the year, could yet suffer major delays; if MEPs in the plenary block proposals, they will go back before Comagri, then return to Parliament for a full vote once again.