A major conference entitled “Reforming the Budget, Changing Europe” was held yesterday in Brussels, marking the end of the consultation phase of the ‘no taboos’ review of the future of the EU budget led by Budget Commissioner Dalia Grybauskaité. The former Lithuanian finance minister presented the results of the consultation process that received more than [...]
Tag Archives: reform
Moving towards a flat rate farm payment?
It is sometimes said that the Common Agricultural Policy establishes a level playing field across Europe, allowing farmers to take part in the European single market without fears about a plethora of national subsidies distorting prices, giving some a helping hand and holding others back. If only it were true. The fact is that when [...]
Free market think tank weighs in on CAP reform
The European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) is a rare creature among Brussels think tanks: first, it advances a strong free trade agenda and second, it does not rely on EU institutions for its funding (its website says that its ‘base funding’ comes from the Free Enterprise Foundation in Sweden). Earlier in the summer [...]
+++Netherlands government position paper+++
The Dutch have a well-deserved reputation for straight talking and so it is with the Government’s new position paper on the future of the CAP. As the following paragraph shows, there is no ambiguity over where the Netherlands government stands on the great targeting debate: In the long term – as described in the present [...]
The great targeting debate
Czech agriculture minister Petr Gandalovic made an curious statement at the informal Agriculture Council meeting held earlier this week in the French Alps. Mr Gandalovic, who will assume the chairmanship of the Council under the Czech EU Presidency in the first half of 2009, told his colleagues: “The more specific you make the policy, the [...]
The CAP and Europe’s subsistence farmers
When the Commission unveiled its proposals for the health check back in November 2007, the DG Agri spin machine highlighted the proposals to introduce upper limits on the subsidies that are paid to Europe’s largest, wealthiest and most competitive farmers. What got much less attention was the plan to introduce lower limits, at a level [...]
French reform paper: An exercise in decoding
France has produced a paper on the future of the CAP which is designed to stimulate discussion at the informal farm council to be held there in the Rhone-Alps region on 21-23 September. The paper is very vague, no doubt deliberately so, and interpreting has to be an exercise in decoding.
European Parliament weighs in on health check
On Monday 14 July the European Parliament agriculture committee will discuss its response to the Commission’s legislative proposals for the CAP health check. The committee’s rapporteur is Luis Capoulos Santos, a Portuguese socialist MEP and former Portuguese Minister for Agriculture. His working document, suggests a number of changes to the Commission proposals, notably a hard [...]
French press for EU summit on CAP
French farm leaders have asked President Sarkozy to organise a Special Summit of EU heads of government on ‘EU ambitions for the agriculture and agri-food sectors.’ Perhaps the word ‘EU’ should be replaced by ‘French’.
Rethinking Less Favoured Areas
The Less Favoured Areas directive is one of the few examples of British influence on the design of the CAP. It was originally conceived as the Mountain Areas Directive with France pressing for a definition that would have excluded Britain’s hills and uplands. But the British emphasis on latitude rather than altitude won the day [...]
“Notre Europe” brainstorming
The think tank “Notre Europe” just released a document on the future of the CAP. Notre Europe’s point of view is that because the health check (HC) is likely to lead mostly to short term adjustments, the “real” debate on the CAP is likely to take place before the next financial perspectives. The outcome could [...]
Health check reactions…
With the Commission’s proposals widely leaked before publication earlier today, there was plenty of time for those who take an interest in EU farming policy to precook their reactions. In this post, which I will endeavor to update over the next few days, I’ll try to bring together a summary of the most interesting responses.
++Commission proposals published++
The Commission’s widely leaked proposals for the health check of the CAP are now available, together with various supporting documents and impact assessments. Analysis and reaction will follow on this site over the coming days. Watch the press conference live at 16.30 Brussels time on this AV link.
US House of Representatives passes ‘veto-proof’ Farm Bill
Dan Morgan of the Washington Post reports on the legislative passage of a 5-year US Farm Bill, with a sufficient majority in the House of Representatives (318:106) to override any Presidential veto. President Bush had previously threatened a veto unless the Farm Bill would set a new upper limit on the size of subsidy payments [...]
Commission proposal: more leaks
The Commission’s detailed proposals for legislation in the CAP health check have appeared on Wikileaks.org.
Darling’s daring bid for reform
The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (aka Finance Minister) Alistair Darling wrote earlier this week to all his counterparts on the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) ahead of today’s meeting, setting out the case for a radical reform of the EU’s agriculture and trade policies. Specifically, he calls for the abolition of direct aids [...]
Commission’s health check proposals leak again
This is the latest in a series of leaks of the Commission’s proposals for the health check, due on 20 May. The explanatory memorandum outlines the latest thinking on the various elements of the package including the issue of progressive modulation: a gradually rising level of compulsory modulation, with higher rates for recipients getting more [...]
France asks “Who will feed the world?”
The French government has launched a new website as part of the run-up to a conference it will hold on 3 July, at the very beginning of France’s 6-month EU Presidency, to discuss the future of European and global agriculture. Entitled “Qui va nourrir le monde?” (Who will feed the world), the debate is being [...]
Stefan speaks out
Before he joined OECD, I would run into agricultural economist Stefan Tangermann from time to time at conferences. I was always impressed by his contributions so it is interesting to read his interview with Agra Focus, one of the latest in an excellent series. In a long interview, he had many interesting points to make [...]
Podcast: February Agriculture Council round-up with Roger Waite
Roger Waite is a long-standing member of the Brussels agricultural press pack and he will be giving a podcast round-up of the monthly Agriculture Council meetings, when farm ministers from all 27 EU member states met to decide the future of EU agriculture and rural development policy. In this month’s meeting, EU farm ministers debated [...]
Agriculture Council fun: rename the CAP
Agra-Facts is one of the best CAP news sources, although it does come with a fairly hefty price tag that probably puts it out of reach of anyone who is not professionally involved in European agriculture policy. Roger Waite, Agra Facts editor, tells me that he would like to open the Agra Facts competition to [...]
Fischler speaks out
I have recently been working with others on an edited collection to be brought out from the Centre for Policy Studies in Brussels which re-visits the Fischler reforms of the CAP. The discussions held in relation to the book, which involved some people who knew Fischler’s work well, confirmed my view that he was someone [...]
Dutch farmers get most subsidy per hectare
One proposal in the Commission’s health check communication of 20 November 2007 is that the member states which still allocate farm subsidies on the basis of historic entitlements should move to the area average system in which allocations are the same across all hectares in a given geographical region. But it looks as though this [...]
Commission drops plan to reduce ‘fat cat’ farm subsidies
Top Commission officials have confirmed that in the face of opposition from four member states (Czech Republic, Germany, Slovakia and the UK) as well as many farm unions, Mariann Fischer Boel has dropped plans to cut the very largest farm subsidy payments by 45 per cent. The plan, which would have affected an estimated 23,000 [...]
Food security: woolly thinking and self defeating solutions
As Jack Thurston has well exposed in his recent entry, the “food security” argument seems to be the new rally call for those trying to justify continuation of untargetted payments to farmers, or even a return to production support (albeit disguised as “risk management”, “income insurance” and the like). At a recent debate I was [...]
European Parliament takes aim at CAP direct payments
A new report commissioned by the Budget Committee of the European Parliament makes interesting reading. The report, written by Jorge Núñez Ferrer (a former Commission fonctionnaire) and Eleni A. Kaditi, both of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, aims to asses whether the CAP provides ‘added value’. Núñez Ferrer and Kaditi define this [...]
Churchill, Malthus, Brown, Barnier and agricultural protectionism
Earlier this week, BBC Radio 4 broadcast Churchill Confidential, a dramatisation of British cabinet meetings chaired by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, records of which have only recently been released into the public domain. In this week’s episode, looking at Churchill’s second term of office (1951-55), we get an overview of the pressing issues of state [...]
Farm unions split over payment limits
It should come as no surprise that the EU level farm union COPA-COGECA’s response to the Commission’s communication on the CAP health check is reminiscent of King Canute, trying to hold back the tide. What is very interesting, however, is that in important areas the response contains dissenting voices (or ‘reserves’) expressed by a handful [...]
Agriculture Ministers hold first discussions on Health Check
Agriculture Ministers had their first discussion of the Commission’s Health Check proposals at the first Council meeting under the Slovenian Presidency yesterday. It appears that the two issues causing the most fuss are the Commission’s suggestions to introduce a progressive reduction in single farm payments to larger farms (inaccurately referred to as capping) and to [...]
Getting decisions on the Health Check
With 27 member states the whole negotiating process in the Farm Council has become a lot more difficult, not that it was ever easy. Another complication is that fisheries matters are also dealt with in the Farm Council and this means that the December meeting is the scene for an inevitable battle between fisheries ministers [...]
Goepel plan: weak, weak, weak
The European Parliament’s agriculture committee published a working paper on the CAP health check at the end of last year. Tamsin Cooper and Martin Farmer at IEEP have already argued that from an environmental perspective it lacks ambition and is internally inconsistent. I have looked in detail at the working paper’s proposals for ‘progressive modulation’ [...]
Commission proposals: so what happens next?
As DG Agriculture’s spokesman Michael Mann has been keen to stress over the past few days since the publication of the Commission’s communication on the CAP health check, this is just the start of the process of deliberation and debate. Dr Tamsin Cooper of the Institute for European Environmental Policy has written a useful briefing [...]
Commission proposals lack ambition
Later today the European Commission will present its proposals for changes to the Common Agricultural Policy – for so long an emblem of bureaucracy, waste and injustice. This will be the first reform since details began to emerge from top secret government files about exactly who gets what from the €55 billion Europe spends each [...]
Sneak peak at latest health check leak
Anyone itching to find out what the Commission will be proposing for the CAP health check next Tuesday 20 November need look no further. DG Agri is as leaky as the proverbial sieve and after the jump we have for your reading pleasure the latest version of the consultation document, including a markup of changes [...]
Why agricultural policy reform is so difficult
Over on the excellent VoxEU site, Thomas Hertel, Roman Keeney and Alan Winters try to answer the question why agricultural policy is so difficult to reform, as illustrated by the way in which difficulties in getting agreement on reduced agricultural support and protection has been one of the factors preventing progress in the Doha Round. [...]
Options for milk quota reform
How to manage the transition to the phasing out of milk quotas is one of the items on the CAP Health Check agenda. A recent study from the FAPRI-Ireland team based in the Rural Economy Research Centre, Teagasc in Ireland has examined the impacts of two alternative transition paths to phasing out milk quotas by [...]
The health check paper: Homeopathy rather than surgery?
The recently leaked Commission Green paper sets the scene for the upcoming health check. What emerges at the moment is a very cautious and minimalist approach, in line with what the Commissioner has been promising for a while. Two things seem striking. The first is the choice to ignore the budget review debate. The second [...]
US Farm Bill: the gloves are off
Will we in Europe soon be watching TV commercials like this one that is currently airing in the United States?
IEEP briefing on the CAP Health Check
An excellent briefing document on the likely direction of the CAP Health Check – and the political forces at play – has been published by the Institute for European Environment Policy (IEEP). To my mind it is the best overview available at this time and I’m delighted that IEEP experts Tamsin Cooper and Martin Farmer [...]
Who benefits from farm subsidies: farmers or landowners?
One of the most contentious issues surrounding farm subsidies is how much of what is paid out actually finds its way into the pocket of the farmer, and how much leaks out into rents paid to landlords, prices charged by the companies selling seed, feed, machines, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and other inputs.
More on capping direct payments
Much initial reaction to the Commission’s leaked Health Check proposals has focused on its renewed attempt to introduce a cap on the Single Farm Payment amount which an individual farmer can receive. In fact, the proposal does not amount to a cap in the sense of an absolute ceiling, but takes of the form of [...]
Leaked proposals on subsidy payment limits: first analysis
Analysis of the Commission’s leaked proposals for the CAP Health Check show that the payment limitations proposal is significantly less ambitious than the proposal made during the Agenda 2000 (1999) and Mid-Term Review (2003) reforms of the CAP.
Capping farm subsidies is on the agenda again
Leaks from Brussels suggest that capping Single Farm Payments is on the agenda for the forthcoming Health Check. This was mooted at the time of the last reform and defeated by opposition from Britain and Germany who would have lost out the most.
Forging the link between the Health Check and the Budget Review
The CAP Health Check has been promoted by the Commission as an exercise focused on tidying up the loose ends of the 2003 Mid Term Review and adapting the CAP to an evolving set of circumstances for the period 2008 – 2013. However, this is only half the equation. The Budget Review is set to [...]
69 Ways to Reform the CAP
Analyses of the contents of the Commission’s Health Check Communication have heightened in recent days with the content of the leaked draft document reported in the agriculture press. Of particular interest from an environmental perspective, is the resurgence of the little applied Article 69. This article is housed within the current CAP legislation, Regulation 1782/2003, [...]
Commission’s CAP Health Check proposals leaked
The Commission’s draft proposals for the CAP Health Check due to be officially released in November have now been widely leaked in the agricultural press (see the UK Farmers Guardian for one summary). Much initial reaction has focused on the Commission’s renewed attempt to introduce a cap on the Single Farm Payment amount which an [...]
Fischer Boel seduced by food security rhetoric
Experts on agricultural policy are often asked why the ‘farm lobby’ has been so successful although, of course, at EU level its influence has declined over time. In part this has been because it has been losing the debate and has often shown insufficient flexibility in responding to new framings of issues.
CAP v GPS?
My farmsubsidy.org colleague Brigitte Alfter tells me that the Danish Liberal Party is proposing diverting CAP money to Galileo, the EU’s sat nav (Global Positioning Satellite) system. If you had €55 billion what would you spend it on? Update (20 September): It looks as though the Danish Liberal Party are not the only ones eyeing [...]
Barroso: ‘Health Check’ could mean farm subsidy cuts
President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso yesterday launched the Commission’s long-awaited review of the EU budget and looks to be squaring up for a fight with his Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel.
Sarko to scrap the CAP?
Hyperactive French President Nicolas Sarkozy this week made a fundamental break with his predecessors, endorsing ‘radical reform’ of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy, according to a report by Agence France Presse.
