The Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting of November 2012 will take place in Brussels on 28 & 29 November 2012, under the presidency of Mr Sofoklis Aletraris, Cypriot Minister of Agriculture, Natural Resources & Environment. Wednesday's session will deal with agriculture issues (under the aegis of Agriculture & Rural Development Commissioner Dacian Cioloş).

Agriculture

The main elements of Ministers' discussions on agriculture will be 3 table rounds on aspects of the CAP reform proposals - greening, market policies and rural development. All 3 debates will be "public" - broadcast live on the Internet - and based around questions put forward by the Presidency.

"Greening" 

The Commission has proposed that 30% of the direct payments envelope should be paid specifically for the use of certain sustainable agricultural practices – for the provision of environmental public goods which are not remunerated by the market. The Commission has proposed that each farmer should apply 3 specific measures, where relevant. These are: maintaining permanent pasture, ensuring crop diversity on arable land, and maintaining a 7% ecological focus area on each holding, which includes taking into account field margins, hedgerows and other existing non-productive areas which are currently not eligible for support.)

In April, the Commission also agreed to look at ways of counting certified agri-environment schemes as partly /fully "equivalent" to the greening measures - so that farmers have a choice of applying the standard 3 measures, or using agri-environment schemes designed at national or regional level to meet the greening provisions. For the Council debate, the Presidency questionnaire focuses on whether there is agreement on equivalence as a tool to achieve greening in an efficient and cost-effective manner; on whether equivalence should be based on the assessed environmental gain of the alternative measures concerned; and on how to reach a simple, manageable, efficient and predictable assessment of environmental gains.

Finally, the Presidency questionnaire also address the need to find a solution so as to avoid double funding, should agri-environment-climate commitments carried out under the rural development pillar be considered as equivalent to greening measures proposed under the direct payment pillar.

The sugar quota regime is due to expire in 2015, as agreed in the 2006 reform of the EU sugar sector. The reform aimed at restructuring the sector in order to make it more competitive. The Commission now considers that the sector is now ready to face international competition, and that the quota system is no longer necessary. Some Member States have however called for an extension of the regime, while others support the planned expiry. The Presidency questionnaire asks Member States what measures, if any, they would envisage as necessary to ensure smooth transition for all actors in the food chain.

Finally, noting that fruitful debates were already held on the commission's proposals for the reform of the rural development policy and that the proposed regulation should be assessed as a whole and as a package with other regulations, the Presidency invites Ministers to signal the most important issues that they consider outstanding and in need of further discussions.

Any other business

• The Commission will report to Ministers on the recent Court of Auditors Annual Report for 2011 which found an increased error rate in rural development and on corrective/preventive action taken to remedy this.
• The Spanish delegation will present a document on the implementation of the EU/Morocco Agricultural Agreement.
• Participants will also discuss a note on a European food model submitted by the Austrian delegation and supported by the Latvian delegation.

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