The June Agricultural Council issues paper

Last Friday the Presidency circulated an issues paper which sets out its views on the potential landing zones on some of the key issues in the CAP reform negotiations. There are some 22 issues on the list; the paper warns that this list is not comprehensive and that other issues are still under negotiation, underlining the scale of the challenge in reaching a political agreement in the trilogue process over three days this week.
The 22 issues are:

    • Implementing financial discipline to finance the crisis reserve and/or to avoid breaches of the financial sub-ceiling;
    • Active farmer definition;
    • MFF issues including capping and degression;
    • Internal convergence options for basic payments;
    • Observance of greening on land not covered by entitlements;
    • Defining Ecological Focus Areas for the greening payment;
    • Equivalence, baseline and double funding of greening practices;
    • Greening penalty;
    • Treatment of young farmers:
    • The percentage ceiling for coupled payments;
    • Treatment of small farmers;
    • Ending of sugar quotas;
    • Vine planting rights;
    • New definition of areas of natural constraints;
    • Financial provisions in the rural development regulation, including co-financing rates and mandatory minimum spend on agri-environment/climate measures;
    • Obligation on MS to pay interest on late payments;
    • Suspension of monthly payments for failures of key controls;
    • Suspension of monthly payments for non-submission of control statistics;
    • Recovery of undue payments;
    • Harmonisation of payment dates.

The Council public discussion on these issues will be broadcast live on the Council webcast site starting at 10.00 am today Monday 24 June.
Photo credit Council of the European Union photographic library