I’m told that the Finnish and Swedish governments (backed by the French EU Presidency) are working right now to insert a loophole to new EU biofuels sustainability standards that would allow the destruction of the world’s peat lands, with appaling consequences for increasing global greenhouse gas emissions. Chapter and verse from BirdLife International after the jump.… Read the rest
Court of Auditors' report on cross compliance is damning
It’s no wonder that the Commission suppressed the Court of Auditors report on cross compliance for as long as it could – the report is damning and undermines the Commission’s case for the legitimacy of EU farm subsidies.
Speaking in 2005, Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel explained how she sees cross compliance in relation nearly 40 billion euros of public expenditure on payments to farmers:
… Read the rest“I would emphasise that decoupled payments are not “money for nothing”. To get the cheque in the post, a farmer has to respect a demanding range of standards related to the environment and animal welfare. We call this system “cross-compliance”.”
Implications of reforming the basis for SPS payments
A recent paper by Beatriz Velaquez from the European Commission throws light on the consequences of moving towards a flat-rate scheme for SPS payments. Drawing on the Impact Analysis for the CAP Health Check proposals and using the FADN database of farm accounts, she examines three options (a) a flat rate scheme with equal payments per hectare across Member States; (b) a flat rate scheme with equal payments per hectare within Member States; and (c) a flat rate scheme with equal payments per entitlement. Her provocative conclusion is that an EU-wide flat rate would do nothing to improve the distributional equity of the SPS payment scheme.… Read the rest
Useful primer on CAP reform
I only recently came across a paper by Franklin Dehousse and Peter Timmerman published by the Egmont Institute, the Royal Institute for International Relations in Belgium entitled The New Context of the Agricultural Debate in Europe. Although published in June of this year, and thus written prior to the recent political conclusion to the CAP Health Check, it provides an excellent summary of CAP developments since the 2003 Mid-Term Review. The paper is not an evaluation of the reforms (Dehousse is a lawyer and Judge at the Court of first instance of the European Communities) but a well-referenced account of the road the CAP has travelled in the past five years.… Read the rest
The last word on biofuels
It’s December and the weekend newspaper supplements are already starting to swell with all those ‘end of the year’ reviews – on news, sport, books, films, celebrity gossip… In the same spirit my German Marshall Fund colleague Dr Tim Searchinger has written a policy brief that brings together in one place the conclusions of ten major reviews of biofuel policies that have been released by leading international insitutions, national technical agencies, and international scientific organizations since January 2008. … Read the rest
20:20 vision
With the health check done and dusted, European agriculture policymakers turn to the bigger questions of the future of the CAP after the current EU financial perspective, which ends in 2013. Ever since the Chirac-Schroeder deal of 2002, which fixed the overall CAP budget and allocation of direct payments for the subsequent eleven years, there has been no serious debate about whether agriculture policy should continue to consume upwards of 50 billion euros a year and whether the current instruments are able to meet current and future challenges. To help shed light on the debate, the Institute for European Environment Policy has this week launched a new website, called CAP2020.… Read the rest
Tangermann's parting shot
Later today Stefan Tangermann will step down as Director of the OECD Trade and Agriculture Directorate, a post he has held since 2002. The OECD has a strict ‘retire-at-65’ rule and it may surprise some to learn that the tall and spritely German, invariably sporting one of his trademark bow-ties, has reached such an age. Professor Tangermann has been a colossus among European agriculture policy analysts for at least two decades. Before taking the job at the OECD he was professor of agricultural economics at the University of Göttingen, having been appointed to that position in 1980.… Read the rest
Commission did suppress cross compliance report, says MEP
A week ago I asked why a unfavourable report on cross compliance by the Court of Auditors, adopted on 4 November, has not yet been published. I wondered whether it had anything to do with the imminent end game of the health check negotiations, which featured propoals to further weaken cross compliance requirements. Turns out my hunch was correct. The Commission did not want the report to see the light of day, at least not until the health check was done and dusted, according to Paulo Casaca MEP. … Read the rest
Podcast: the inside story on the health check deal
Roger Waite, Editor of Agra Facts, gives the inside story on the all-night negotiations that led to a deal early this morning (20th November) on the health check of the CAP. He explains how the negotiations were handled, that the big winners were Italy, Germany and France and that at key moments there was intervention from several heads of government. He also explains that the United Kingdom was joined by several of the new member states who were not able to fully endorse to the final agreement.
According to Roger the biggest surprises were a new milk fund and the decimation of the progressive element to its plan to redirect farm subsidies from direct aids to funds for farmland conservation and rural economic development.… Read the rest
Parliament’s health check recriminations begin
With the ink barely dry on the Council of Ministers’ final compromise deal on the health check, leading members of the European Parliament are laying into each other after a day of chaotic voting on the Parliament’s approach to the CAP. In a podcast interview yesterday, Paulo Casaca MEP (Socialist Group) told me that the Parliament was ‘lost’ and suffering from a lack of political leadership, something he thought could come from the Commission or from within the Parliament itself. Meanwhile Neil Parish MEP, chairman of the Agriculture Committee and a senior member of the right-leaning European Peoples Party – European Democrats grouping, voted against his own committee’s report and against the EPP-ED position.… Read the rest