According to a background note from the Slovenian EU Presidency, the Agriculture Council will hold a policy debate on the Commission’s communication on the “health check” of the CAP at this month’s meeting in Brussels on Monday 18 February.
The background note says that
The discussion will be framed by the following Presidency’s questionnaire which intends to focus on certain items raised by delegations during their previous exchange of views on that issue, in particular at the level of the Special Committee on Agriculture:
1. What are the three main priorities for your delegation in the Health Check exercise?
2. With the expiry of the milk quota regime in 2015, what measures are a necessary part of the soft landing scenario?
The Presidency intends to draw Council conclusions in March in order to allow the Commission to come back with legislative proposals in May for their detailed discussion in the second half of 2008. The European Parliament is drafting an own-initiative report on the Commission’s communication which should be adopted in March (Rapporteur Lutz Goepel).
The debate will – as with most meetings of the Council – be held behind closed doors. Some brief and fairly uninformative minutes will be circulated afterwards. But we will probably never know exactly who said what or what are the three top priorities for each member state heading into the health check.
Are you attending or do you have a seat in the salle d’écoute? If so, please share your observations with the readers of this blog. You can email to news@capreform.eu or fax to +32 (0) 2791 9833 (Belgium) or +44 (0) 207 806 0786 (UK).
