MEPs on the European Parliament Agriculture Committee yesterday clarified their position on some of the broad areas where reforms will result in changes to the European Common Agriculture Policy. Following further voting on Wednesday 13th and Thursday 14th February, MEPs on the committee gave more details on the major areas of change under the reformed 2014-2020 CAP.

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The clarified Agriculture Committee position will pave the way for negotiations with EU member states. It comes after voting by the Committee last month on around 8,000 amendments suggested to the EU Commission's CAP proposals. The resultant agreements were subject to wide-ranging criticism from both sides of the political divide when they were unveiled in late January.   

The proposals will now be voted on by the European Parliament as a whole, before discussions with individual states take place.

On Thursday (14th January), the committee released further information covering:

• who should get EU-funded direct payments;
• how they can be more fairly distributed both among and within member states;
• the measures that farmers should take to protect the environment better;
• how best to help young farmers, small farmers, and those in areas with natural constraints;
• How to strengthen farmers' price bargaining position;

Who should receive subsidies?

MEPs agreed that subsidy funding should be limited to supporting 'active farmers', as opposed to other landowners who are not producing food but can currently claim subsidy payments. However, although there have been calls to establish a universal definition for what constitutes an 'active farmer', the Agriculture Committee resolved to defer responsibility for making his decision to member states' governments.

They did this on the proviso that certain entities, including "transport and real estate companies, airports, sports clubs, campsite operators, mining companies or other non-agricultural enterprises" must "automatically be excluded unless they can prove that their agricultural activities form a significant part of their overall economic activities."

Although it risks weakening Commission measures intended to reserve subsidy payments for those producing affordable food for European consumers, Committee-members argued that their decision to defer responsibility for defining 'active farmers' "greatly simplifies the Commission's original proposal".

Moves towards greater equality in payments

MEPs voted for a greater rebalancing of subsidy payments between farmers in older EU states and newer entrants than had been suggested by the Commission. This current year of spending, direct payments per hectare vary from €83 in Latvia to €494 in Malta. The committee agreed to restructure funding so that "farmers in no member state receive less than 65 percent of the EU average."

The Committee also upheld Commission proposals to cap direct payments to any one farm at €300,000, though heads of state during the EU Budget negotiations taking place earlier this month suggested such a measure should also be ultimately decided by individual states. If this proves to be the case, capping in the UK is unlikely.  

Although Green MEPs complained that the €300,000 threshold set by the Committee was too high, MEPs opted to progressively reduce other high payments. They suggested sliding reductions of 70 percent for claimants receiving between €250,000 and €300,000, 40 percent to those receiving between €200,000 and €250,000 and 20 percent to those receiving €150,000 and €200,000. Cooperatives and other such groups are exempt from the new rules.

Environmental measures

MEPs were criticised in the wake of their announcements in January for weakening 'greening' measures, which the Commission had introduced to make CAP more responsive to the desires of the European Public. However, the Committee said its decision was to make environmental rules "more flexible, linked to the size of the holding, [and allow for] exceptions to reflect geographical conditions." 

The agreements reached in this area include:

• Farmers whose holdings are certified under national or regional environmental schemes would be exempt from mandatory greening measures on the basis of 'equivalence."
• Farmers with holdings of 10 ha – 30 ha of arable land should be required to plant at least two different crops (rather than the three proposed by the Commission). None of these crops should cover more than 80 percent (as compared to 70 percent) of the arable land. Farms of more than 30 ha should still be required to cultivate three crops.
• Land under permanent grass and permanent pasture should be maintained at up to 5 percent and in exceptional circumstances up to 7 percent.
• Farmers with more than 10 ha of arable land would still have to ensure that 3 percent of land, rising to 5 percent later in the budget period, (rather than 7 percent as proposed by the Commission) is reserved in the form of "ecological focus areas" (EFAs) to benefit wildlife.
• The committee also backed Commission plans to make 30 percent direct payments conditional upon compliance with greening measures, but said that farmers failing to comply should not face reductions further than losing the amount conditional on complying with 'greening' measures.

Young farmers, small farmers

To attract young people into farming, the committee approved an additional 25 percent payment for young farmers (defined as those under 40 years old, against a UK average of 58), with a maximum of 100 hectares.

Whereas the CAP has been criticised in the past for benefitting large industrial farmers and companies at the expense of smaller farmers, Committee members claimed to have made moves to redress this, though they acknowledged they had left the ultimate decision over whether to introduce support schemes for small farmers down to individual states.  

If states opt to provide such a scheme, then farmers entitled to less than €1,500 in direct payments must be automatically included. Small farmers would receive a minimum of €500 and a maximum of €1,500 (compared to the Commission proposal of €1000) or €200 – 500 in the case of Croatia, Cyprus and Malta.

In order to boost farmers' bargaining power to get fair prices for their products, farmers' organisations should be allowed to negotiate on behalf of their members, "without falling foul of competition law," Committee members said.

Full information on the Committee's decision is available from the European Parliament