Year: 2011

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Updated analysis of Commission legislative proposals

The International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development has now published the final updated version of my paper looking at the trade and development implications of the Commission’s legislative proposals for the CAP post 2013. Apart from making some corrections to the preliminary version, it takes account of the main changes in the Commission’s proposals on October 12th last compared to what was in the heavily-leaked drafts as well as the full impact assessments released at the same time.

The main changes include:
– The replacement of the firm commitment to have a uniform payment per hectare across all land and member states by 2029 in the regulation itself, to an aspirational commitment in the preambular material that member states will work towards this goal in the next financial perspectives period.… Read the rest

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Analysis of the Commission's legislative proposals due tomorrow Wednesday 12 October

Tomorrow the Commission will unveil its legislative proposals for the future CAP regulations after 2013. As readers of this blog will be aware, the proposals have been widely flagged in various leaked draft versions. But it will be fascinating to see to what extent, if at all, the the final version will take account of the intense lobbying of the Commission by member states in recent weeks.
The International Centre for Sustainable Trade and Development (ICSTD) has just published a draft paper that I have written which attempts to summarise the likely changes to be announced tomorrow and to assess their implications for trade and development.… Read the rest

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Analysis of the Commission’s legislative proposals due tomorrow Wednesday 12 October

Tomorrow the Commission will unveil its legislative proposals for the future CAP regulations after 2013. As readers of this blog will be aware, the proposals have been widely flagged in various leaked draft versions. But it will be fascinating to see to what extent, if at all, the the final version will take account of the intense lobbying of the Commission by member states in recent weeks.

The International Centre for Sustainable Trade and Development (ICSTD) has just published a draft paper that I have written which attempts to summarise the likely changes to be announced tomorrow and to assess their implications for trade and development.… Read the rest

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The future role for the European Innovation Partnership for agricultural productivity and sustainability

One of the new initiatives to be announced by the Commission when it publishes its legislative proposals for the CAP post 2013 on Wednesday 12 October next will be the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) for agricultural productivity and sustainability. The Commission attaches great importance to this instrument to address lagging productivity growth in agriculture and to contribute to increased innovation.

To date, there is relatively little information on how this new instrument would work and what it will mean. The Commission is still in the process of internal reflection to define the objectives and governance of the EIP. However, some light is thrown on the Commission’s thinking in the evidence of Commissioners Ciolos and Geoghegan-Quinn to a recent UK House of Lords inquiry into Innovation in EU agriculture.… Read the rest

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Eurobarometer on CAP reform

A new Eurobarometer public opinion poll shows widespread support among European citizens for the Commission’s main CAP reform proposals. The poll, conducted by TNS Opinion and Social, interviewed 26,713 adults, enough for a representative sample in each member state.

The first question, concerning setting a cap on the amount of aid to the largest farms found that 47% of respondents favour a limit while 28% opposed a limit. 15 per cent didn’t know. Support for capping was strongest in Cyprus (+54%), Denmark (+36%), Finland (+33%) and Sweden (29%). Malta was the only country where more people thought a limit was a bad thing (-20%).… Read the rest

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Production effects of moving to flatter structure of direct payments

What might be the production, consumption and trade effects of the Commission’s proposals to redistribute direct payments by moving to a flat(ter) structure of direct payments across the Member States, and to redistribute payments within Member States by moving from the historic basis of farm payments (in the majority of Member States which operate this system) to a regional flat rate system?

A silly question, some might respond, for are not the EU’s direct payments decoupled (leaving aside the continued existence of a share of coupled payments) and thus not meant to have an effect on farm production? If a direct payment is truly decoupled, then moving payments from one farm to another, or from one country to another, will affect relative incomes but not output.… Read the rest

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Updating the base period for SPS entitlements

One of the more significant changes proposed by the Commission in its draft legislative proposal on direct payments is to eliminate those existing entitlements to support which farmers have built up in the past. The basic payment scheme will replace the Single Payment Scheme and the Single Area Payment Scheme as from 2014. The new scheme will operate on the basis of payment entitlements allocated at national or regional level to all farmers according to their eligible hectares in the first year of application.

The proposal to allocate new entitlements on the basis of land farmed in 2014 has provoked a massive protest in Ireland (see, for example, this Irish Examiner story).… Read the rest

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Problems viewing graphs in posts using Internet Explorer

Apologies that there appears to be a problem in viewing in-post images in previous posts using Internet Explorer, which means that often the browser does not display the associated graphs. At the moment I don’t understand the reason for this, but if you want to see the graphics, then please use an alternative browser such as Firefox, Chrome or Opera. … Read the rest

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What is the likely cost of greening Pillar 1?

The Commission’s proposals for the design of direct payments after 2013 include a greening component which, according to the draft legislative proposal (yet to be released on 12 October next and thus subject to change) will be mandatory for farmers in receipt of the basic income payment – thus becoming what I called in an earlier post a form of super-cross-conditionality.

In the impact assessment to be released with the legislative proposal the Commission has made some estimates of the cost of implementing these green measures. In this post, I examine these costs using information in the draft version of the impact assessment (Annex 12 Impact of Scenarios on the Distribution of Direct Payments and Farm Income).… Read the rest

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The future for national envelopes and Member State flexibility in Pillar 1

A feature of the move towards decoupled direct payments in the EU since the Fischler 2003 reform has been greater flexibility for Members States in the management of these payments. This can be seen in various ways: the different options on which to base the Single Payment Scheme; different cross compliance requirements including definition of Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions; different possibilities for modulating payments between Pillar 1 and Pillar 2; and provisions for ‘national envelopes’ and for the retention of partial coupling.

In this post I examine the future for national envelopes and partial coupling in the light of the Commission’s draft regulation on direct payments after 2013.… Read the rest