Members of the European Parliament's agriculture committee are attempting to wade through a record 8,000 amendments to the Commission's Common Agriculture Policy reforms.

The Committee is voting CAP reform proposals on Wednesday and Thursday (23rd and 24th January). Committee Chair Paolo de Castro will make an announcement on the voting in a press conference on Thursday. At 55 million Euros each year, the CAP is the EU's costliest area of spending.

On Wednesday, Committee members voted to cap the amount of payments wealthy landowners can receive. MEPS voted to cap support payments at 300,000 Euros from 2014, which will mark a severe reduction in payments for the EU's wealthiest beneficiaries of CAP payments, including members of the British Royal Family. 

They suggested money saved from the measures should fund rural development, and proposed agricultural cooperatives be exempt from the 300,000 threshold. MEPs also pushed for sugar quotas to be retained until 2020, the end of the next budget period.

The Parliament claims its position on the reforms will be determined by what will happen to the EU's long-term budget, but there have been breakdowns in European Council talks to establish a figure for the next budget period (2014-2020) The next European Council summit on the budget will take place in February.

A number of environmental and sustainable farming organisations last year came together to criticise the EU approach to CAP reform. In November, prior to the last EU Council meeting, the No Blank Cheques coalition warned that Europe's Heads of State would be agreeing on the future EU Budget for 2014-2020, and allocating a large part of that figure to funding agriculture, without knowing how the money will be spent.

The coalition, made up of IFOAM, WWF and the European Environmental Bureau amongst others, called for a "green and fair" CAP, arguing that current policy is socially and environmentally unjust. It warned that "there is a serious threat that once the financial commitment is made, any meaningful and progressive environmental measures will be stripped away [from upcoming CAP reforms], due to limited resources," adding "Some MEPs and Agriculture Ministers have even gone as far as to say that there will be no greening if the CAP budget is reduced."

The group said in a statement "From the start, negotiations on the future of the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) were supposed to be about delivering more for Europe’s environment, rural communities and long term food security. Despite this welcome and ambitious intent, it now appears that the current destructive business as usual agenda will persist."

In line with No Blank Cheques’ fears, MEPs further undermined 'greening' measures proposed by the Commission, reducing the requirement to leave land fallow to 3 percent, rising to 5 percent in 2016.

However, they did move to distribute subsidies more fairly between the EU states. A powerful farming lobby in Eastern Europe, particularly the Baltic states, has been calling for more equality in farm payments.  

Once MEPs in the agriculture committee have negotiated on the reforms they will go before the rest of the Parliament, expected to be in March. Both Parliament and the Council of Ministers will have to agree on any reform of the policy before it can enter into force. Due to delays in EU budget and CAP reform talks, the next EU budget, and with it the CAP, are now unlikely to enter into effect on their intended start date.