Ahead of yesterday's Parliament Environment Committee meeting, green groups in the EU warned that the Common Agricultural Policy was at risk of losing the last vestiges of its greening claims.  

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Environment groups critical of EU legislators' response to intense industry lobbying on CAP reforms have suggested that MEPs feeling the pressure ahead of EU elections later this year risk watering down the already fractured CAP deal. The reformed CAP has been criticised by conservationists and farm groups alike for its complex, fragmented nature; it effectively re-nationalises several key issues around support payments and conditions, has further weakened cross-compliance and is rife with loopholes and exemptions.

In its meeting yesterday evening, the Parliament's Agriculture Committee voted on measures that would further reduce greening commitments under the reformed CAP. MEPs were prepared to dilute the Commission's proposals for land to be set aside as focus areas to improve biodiversity, which came into effect with the first raft of CAP amendments at the beginning of the year.

'Ecological Focus Areas' survived the trilogue CAP negotiations last summer, though the area covered was cut down to five percent of a holding's arable farmland. The Parliament agriculture committee has since demanded a raft of concessions to make the EFA rules impact less on farmers' productivity. The Commission acquiesced earlier this month and admitted that, if EFAs appear to hamper production in monitoring conducted this year, it will reverse the new rules on Focus Areas.   

Last month the European Environmental Bureau warned that, although commission had the legal power to save some elements of CAP greening, Commissioners had instead opted "to undermine it even further by giving up on key elements such as the sustainable management of Ecological Focus Areas." The Bureau said all eyes will now turn to Member States and their decisions in the coming months, given the amount of flexibility they have in the implementation of the reformed policy; the suggestion being that member states will now need to answer to their own citizens if they fail to ensure the "public money for public goods" promised under the reformed CAP.

In light of changes that would double the amount that nitrogen fixing crops count towards EFA requirements, EEB suggested that the amendments could lead in some cases to "a bizarre form of financial support for protein crop production."

EEB spokesperson Faustine Defossez commented, "In failing to ban the use of pesticides on areas intended for protecting biodiversity, the Commission wiped out any remaining bits of green left from a damaging co-decision process." She added, "Instead of preserving the integrity of the pockets of green that were left they decided to leave the choice to Member States to slightly green their land, greenwash or even go back on previous environmental requirements."

Industry welcomes Committee vote

However, the NFU in the UK welcomed the outcome of the Committee's vote, which the farm group said "means the [UK] Government is a step closer in making key decisions on implementing the next CAP reform in England and Wales."

NFU President Meurig Raymond said, "I am very pleased that MEPs have managed to increase the value of areas of nitrogen fixing crops so that if a farmer grows 1ha of qualifying crop this would deliver 0.7ha of EFA rather than the 0.3ha originally proposed. It is now so important that Defra and the Welsh Government… make sure that there is no urge to gold-plate the rules by imposing any additional production constraints like limiting where they can be grown and the use of inputs."

Mr Raymond suggested that farmers in England and Wales could be put at a comparative disadvantage, as others elsewhere in Europe "could count their hedges and edges" as EFA under the new 'more flexible' CAP rules.  He said this could result in farmers being "forced to lay productive land aside to reach the five per cent EFA requirement," but added, "I am also reassured that the Commission is willing to review the five per cent EFA rule in the first year. We need the Commission to undertake a similar review of the three crop rule, with a view to scrapping it at the earliest opportunity."

In an open letter to agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos sent last month, EEB's secretary general Jeremy Wates and Birdlife International head of policy Ariel Brunner said the Commission and Parliament's handling of the ' delegated acts' "Makes a mockery of the European Commission's role [and] effectively announces that the rules just adopted are not to be taken seriously because even weaker rules will be adopted in a few months' time."

In their open letter, the pair added that, "Giving in to the demands of a few individual MEPs without any formal request from the European Parliament gives the unfortunate impression that the Commission has been co-opted into someone's re-election campaign."