Representatives of Europe's cities and regions have gathered to assess the broad Common Agricultural Policy agreements struck by EU legislators in the Commission, Parliament and Council on last week.

In meetings on Wednesday and Thursday (3rd-4th July), at the Committee of the Regions plenary in Brussels CoR President Ramón Luis Valcárcel and EU Commissioner Dacian Cioloş debated the agreed reforms.  

CoR President, Ramón Luis Valcárcel said that, with funding of the CAP making up 38 percent of the entire EU budget for 2014 alone, the results of last week's intense negotiations will have considerable consequences for Europe's rural regions from 2014-2020.

Commissioner Ciolos maintains the talks, which took place in Luxembourg and Brussels over most of last week, eventually culminating in a series of broad agreements announced on Wednesday evening, were successful. He said, "This agreement will lead to far-reaching changes: making direct payments fairer and greener, strengthening the position of farmers within the food production chain and making the CAP more efficient and more transparent. The CAP will play a key part in achieving the overall objective of promoting smart, sustainable and inclusive growth."

However, the reforms have proven to be an unrelenting source of controversy since the Commission drafts were first leaked in 2010, and this did not cease with the agreements reached during trilogue negotiations last week.

Although EU leaders maintain that the policy will be more equitable and more environmentally responsible, industry groups have said the reforms could affect food production, without providing any environmental benefit, whilst environment groups warned that the agreed levelling and greening measures will prove to week to be effective.

Faustine Defossez, of the European Environmental Bureau, which represents over 140 consumer and environment groups across the Bloc said EU legislators "have agreed to ask taxpayers to keep on spending hundreds of billions for the next seven years on a policy which will continue to damage our natural resources and threaten our long term food security… some important details still have to be decided in the months to come, but at this stage no cosmetic change could hide this complete failure for people, farming and the environment."

A more detailed breakdown the reforms announced last week is available here.