Further details have emerged of agreements reached under the Common Agricultural Policy reform process, following negotiations in Luxembourg.

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Following the second day of talks in Luxembourg on Tuesday, and months of preparatory meetings, negotiators assured that the new policy package is slowly taking shape, though the three parties involved remained "some way from an overall political agreement" on Tuesday night, according to Irish Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney, who is chairing the talks.   

Defra announced on Wednesday that, with a final deal yet to be struck, the UK Council delegate has supported a mandate for the Irish Presidency to take the revised CAP proposals to Brussels, where they will be discussed further and then go before the full European Parliament.

However, some clear progress has been made according to UK Agriculture Council negotiator Owen Paterson. As predicted, a provisional end date of 2017 has been placed on EU sugar quotas; although quotas were due to end in 2015, the Parliament had pushed for an extension to 2020, the end of the next budget period. On Tuesday, a compromise date of 2017 was agreed agreed upon.  

Paterson said he has opposed any measure which he believes would create "costly interventions in the market". In line with the coalition government's neoliberal economic stance, Paterson would like to do away with subsidy payments or other forms of support which do not marry with 'free trade' and market liberalisation.  

Paterson added that negotiators have allowed each of the four parts of the UK to implement CAP as they see fit. The Environment Secretary said, "Farmers in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales can be reassured that their governments have the complete freedom to deliver a CAP tailored to their needs and circumstances."

Provisional greening agreements

Under the reformed CAP, member states will be allowed to use certification schemes as a means of securing the 30 percent of single payments dependent on fulfilling 'greening' criteria. The UK government plans to introduce one such scheme; European legislators still need to devise a means of ensuring equivalence between the national schemes across the EU.

The Greening deal struck this week is likely to disappoint environment groups, who will see it as watered down in comparison to the Commission's initial proposals. Thomas Fertl, vice president of EU organic group IFOAM, commented on Tuesday, "Organic movements acknowledge that the revised Council position slowly steers the CAP towards greener and fairer outcomes. However a weak Pillar 1 greening and still no decisive commitments for a strong and green Pillar 2 show the resistance of member states to deliver a more ambitious and effective reform

"Rural Development measures offer the most potential to deliver greater sustainability. While some improvements have been put in place, these will only have a real impact if there is strong financial firepower in the Pillar 2 budget."

A provisional document released by the European Commission shed more light on the greening proposals as they stand:

Equivalence

• Equivalent measures removed where they relate to permanent crops. New sentence added to confirm no double funding.

Maintenance of Permanent Grassland

• Permanent grassland ratio can be applied at national, regional or farm level.

Ecological focus areas

• The minimum area threshold where there will be no EFA requirement is 15 hectares of arable land.
• The percentage - starting at 5% in 2015, then moving to 7% only after a Commission report in 2017 and subject to a legislative proposal
• Permanent crops are now excluded from EFA.
• EFA applies to arable land only.
• A list of EFA eligible areas has been agreed (e.g. fallow land, terraces, landscape features, buffer strips, agro-forestry, etc.) as well as exemptions (e.g. holdings where more than 75% of the holding is in grassland, heavily forested areas, etc. )
• Having a weighting matrix as at template to be included as an annex in the basic act, with figures added by the Commission by the way of delegated acts.

Plans to allow a 15 percent modulation of payments (the ability for governments to shift funds between the single payment and rural development pots) without the need for government co-financing have gone through in Luxembourg, and definitions have also been agreed for what constitutes a small farmer, young farmer and active farmer.

A mandatory scheme will be available to provide extra support young farmers, using up to 2 percent of Pillar one (direct payment) funds. An optional scheme will also be set up to help small farmers.

Neogitators agreed to a "short mandatory negative list" in a bid to exclude claimants who are not actively producing food. This would prevent bodies such as airports, railway services, and sports centres, all of which have benefited under earlier CAP regimes, from accessing funding under the reformed policy.

The CAP accounts for 40 percent of the EU budget, or around €50 billion annually. Payments to UK farmers amount to around €4 billion each year. The new policy will miss its intended start date of January 2014, and will instead be implemented gradually over the course of the year.

The three groups negotiating a CAP deal in Brussels will make an announcement on Wednesday afternoon, in which they hope to give a broad outline of the next CAP package.