A meeting in Luxembourg on Monday (24 June) will herald the final stages of debate in the trilogue negotiations on Common Agricultural policy reform. In addition to Agriculture Council ministers, the Commission will be represented by Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos and the parliament by a delegation of MEPs during Monday's talks.

It is hoped that a final deal on CAP reform will be reached during negotiations this week, though progress has been slow so far. According to the European Commission, "The aim is to start the final political trilogue in Brussels as soon as possible after the Council, followed by a meeting of the Parliament Agriculture Committee."

Key CAP issues still not resolved

While EU leaders hope to reach some kind of agreement this week, there are still a number of areas of contention. Although all parties acknowledge sugar quotas will end during the current CAP period, the actual end date is still the subject of discussion; quotas are set to end in 2015, but could remain until 2020 – the end of the next CAP period.

image expired

Member state governments on the EU Council have opposed caps on single farm payments, which proposals have set at €300,000. Although the Council wants to abandon this measure and green groups have said the current threshold is much too high to constitute an effective levelling mechanism, the €300,000 cap has the support of the EU Parliament and Commission.  

All three legislative bodies have agreed to link 30 percent of subsidy payments to environmental performance. Although 30 percent of payments will be conditional on farmers fulfilling certain 'greening measures', the three factions disagree on the exact nature of these measures as well as the appropriate sanctions for failing to abide by them. The proposal that a certain amount of land should be left fallow is also subject to debate; farm lobbyists, the Parliament and Council have all warned of the return to 'set aside' could impact on production.

More details of the specific areas up for discussion are available here.

Lochhead urges Paterson to support Scottish farmers

Ahead of Monday's talks, Scotland's Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead called on UK negotiators to uphold the interest of Scottish Farmers as debates near their conclusion. The Rural Affairs Secretary is in Luxembourg this week for the debates, but Scotland does not have its own seat at the negotiating table, so it will be up to UK representative Owen Paterson to put forward the case for Britain as a whole.

Lochhead said on Sunday (23 June) "These are crucial CAP talks and possibly the last chance to influence the final outcome. A key priority for Scotland – which I will be pushing hard on - is securing a level playing field for voluntary coupled support across Europe, with the option of using up to 15 per cent."

He continued, "I am optimistic that we will reach a decision next week on the principles, through there will still be details to be addressed. This will help to give our farmers clarity about the future which I know will be welcomed."

The latest figures published by the Scottish government show livestock numbers in the country have fallen by 6 percent since 2005. Lochhead called for measures to support a reversal of this trend.  

Scotland's three priorities for CAP reform are:

• A level playing field for voluntary coupled support
• Better funding arrangements for new entrants
• The option, within greening measures, to tackle climate change

NFU president Peter Kendall is also in Luxembourg, alongside leaders of other European farm unions and lobby groups. Kendall is seeking a deal that will benefit "the UK's larger farm structures."

On Monday, he said, "There [are] certainly a lot of really contentious and politically sensitive issues still to be dealt with this week. Whether negotiators will succeed in brokering a political agreement is yet to be seen. Some people have suggested that we must have a deal at all costs. I disagree, what's far more important is that we achieve the right deal and that Defra then implements that fairly in England."

In contrast to the message being put across by Kendal and his counterparts in the European big farm lobby, environment groups are also appealing to negotiators. Conservation and small farm NGOs have called on ministers to take taxpayers' views into account in this week's talks. Last week, the European Environment Bureau said EU legislators, especially the Council of Ministers, have eroded many of the proposals intended to make European farming more environmentally and socially sustainable.

The organisation said 77 percent of Europeans responding to a Eurobarometer poll believed the CAP reformers should ensure "investment in agriculture [is] better targeted, for more societal and environmental benefits."

EEB warned that current path negotiations have taken "will only serve to make the EU's own environmental objectives even harder to deliver and further de-legitimise the CAP," and said, "This result would be a failure not just for the environment, the bedrock of food production; it would be a failure for more sustainable farming, for our long term food security and for the European citizens who pay for the policy."

Nevertheless, negotiators maintain that many of the considerations have been introduced with the aim of making the CAP fairer and greener, in a bid to justify its continuation to a European public which is increasingly educated and opinionated on the subject of agriculture.

The reformed CAP has already missed its initial deadline, and, as it is now deemed too late to introduce the new policy from January 2014, changes will be implemented gradually over the course of the year. The Commission has worked out contingency arrangements to ease transition into the new policy framework.

Once a deal is reached in trilogue negotiations, it will go before the full European Parliament, which has an equal say in CAP reform for the first time in the policy's 50 year history. Although some of those involved in the tripartite talks, including the Commissioner himself, continue to express hope that an agreement will be reached this week, such a deal is far from guaranteed.