This is a shortened version of a post which was first written for the Institute for International and European Affairs EnvironmentNexus blog
From the perspective of the agricultural environment, there are three elements in the European Council conclusions on the EU’s Multi-annual Financial Framework on 7-8 February which should be noted.
The first element is the general commitment that climate action objectives will represent at least 20% of EU spending in the period 2014-2020 and should be reflected in the appropriate instruments to ensure that they contribute to strengthening energy security and building a low-carbon, resource efficient and climate resilient economy.
As agricultural spending will continue to account for 36% of total MFF spending during this period, it will also have to contribute to this objective. This will require a classification of what spending contributes to climate action objectives. One might speculate, for example, that the Commission is likely to consider the proposed green payment in Pillar 1 as a climate action instrument, in addition to some spending under the Pillar 2 rural development budget.… Read the rest
Will the MFF be agreed this week?
Heads of State and Government meet Thursday and Friday 7 and 8 February in the first European Council meeting of 2013. A second attempt to reach agreement on a Multi-annual Financing Framework (MFF) for the 2014-2020 period is on the agenda. Prime Ministers and European Ministers have been criss-crossing Europe for the past few weeks to drum up understanding and support for their various national positions, with Merkel and Hollande meeting in Paris today Wednesday on the day before the summit begins.
Herman van Rompuy, the Council President, is playing his cards very close to his chest. Unlike prior to the earlier failed attempt to reach agreement in November last year, a third draft of the Council conclusions (HvR-III) will not be formally circulated before the meeting (see this post for commentary on HvR-I and this post for commentary on HvR-II).
The talks at the European Council of 22-23 November were suspended and will now pick up from that point.… Read the rest
The MFF numbers – where we stand
Later this week (7-8 February), the European Council will meet for a second time to try to agree the parameters for the EU’s Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF) for the 2014-2020 period. The prospects for success remain uncertain; tomorrow I will review the main outstanding issues and the likely flashpoints when the Heads of State and Government meet.
The purpose of this post is to present the numbers as published in successive drafts of the MFF since the Commission’s original proposal in June 2011 and a comparison with the numbers in the 2007-2013 MFF. This provides the context to evaluate the blueprint which European Council President Herman van Rompuy will put before the leaders and any potential agreement.
The main steps since the original June 2011 proposal have been the Commission’s amended proposal in July 2012 to take account of new legislative commitments entered into after June 2011, the proposed accession of Croatia in July 2013, and revised national and regional GNI figures which imply a recalculation of cohesion fund entitlements especially for those member states subject to capping; the Cyprus Presidency’s draft negotiating box in October 2012 which presented revised figures for the first time; and the two proposals for draft European Council conclusions made by Herman van Rompuy (HvR-I and Hvr-II) before and during the last European Council meeting in November 2012.… Read the rest
The development interest in the CAP reform debate
Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, called last week for MEPs to take into account the impact on developing countries when voting on amendments to the draft CAP regulations post-2013 (see also here). Among other issues, he called on MEPs to support the views of the European Parliament’s Development Committee, which voted unanimously in favour of a mechanism to monitor the CAP’s development impacts (look for Amendment 4 inserting a new Article 110(a)). In the voting last week, COMAGRI MEPs declined to do this.
De Schutter had previously issued a report with some controversial recommendations on how this round of CAP reform could help to realise the right to food in developing countries. Developing country interests have played a role in the debate around the CAP2020 (notably being used to support a delay in the elimination of sugar quotas beyond 2015 and also more generally as part of the argument that the EU needs to produce more food in order to contribute to global food security – there is a good rebuttal of this argument in this study).… Read the rest
Following the negotiations on the Direct Payments Regulation
COMAGRI will vote on compromise amendments to the Commission’s proposals for the four main CAP regulations this week. To understand the dynamics of the legislative process, it is helpful to be able to see the positions of the main institutions side-by-side. I have constructed a four-column spreadsheet table showing, article by article, the positions of the main actors as we know them to date for the direct payments regulation (download the file to your computer by clicking File, Download in the upper left of the Google Drive document when the link opens). The four columns show, for each article:
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The Commission’s proposal October 2011
The COMAGRI rapporteur’s amendments May 2012
The Council’s position as summarised in the Cyprus Presidency document December 2012
The COMAGRI compromise amendments Jan 2013
I have only had the time to construct this table for the direct payments regulation so far. There may be readers who have already done this exercise for the other regulations and, if you are prepared to share the table, I would be happy to post it on this site with attribution.… Read the rest
The significance of Rule 70 for CAP reform negotiations
To understand the possible timing of the CAP reform negotiations it is crucial to understand the new decision-making process under the Lisbon Treaty involving both the Parliament and the Council. In a recent post, I set out my understanding of the process, based on the assumption shared by most commentators (for example, see this Brussels briefing) that the Parliament would vote in plenary on its position on CAP reform in March, thus making a first reading agreement impossible.
I now think another scenario is more likely, namely, that COMAGRI will appoint its formal trilogue negotiating team at its next meeting in a week’s time based on the mandate arising from the voting on the compromise amendments. The Parliament in plenary may decide to approve this mandate in February, but it may not actually vote on the CAP reform regulations until a new set of amendments emerge from the trilogue process, assuming this is successful.… Read the rest
Forum on CAP reform
I did not get time before Christmas to draw attention to the Forum on the Common Agricultural Policy after 2013, a series of articles on the CAP reform process published in the Nov/Dec issue of Intereconomics. This is a review of European economic policy published jointly by the Centre for European Policy Studies and the Leibniz Information Centre for Economics. I contributed one of the articles, and the contributions of my colleagues are uniformly excellent even if they take different views on some of the main issues.
The full list of contents is as follows:
Jean-Christophe Bureau Where is the Common Agricultural Policy heading?
Stefan Tangermann CAP reform and the future of direct payments
Alan Matthews Greening the Common Agricultural Policy post-2013
Davide Viaggi Rural development in the post-2013 CAP: huge opportunity or devil in the details?
Christophe Crombez, Louise Knops and Johan Swinnen Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy under the co-decision procedure
Jean-Christophe Bureau accepts that the Commission’s reform proposal does not address the most fundamental criticisms of the CAP including the unwanted effects of direct payments and the lack of targeting of the budget on public goods.… Read the rest
Welcome to the Irish Presidency
Ireland took over the EU Presidency from 1 January 2013 and the Irish Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Simon Coveney, will chair the Council of Agricultural Ministers for the next six months. Coveney is an energetic Minister and the Irish have an experienced bunch of officials (see who’s who in the Irish delegation) who will do everything to ensure an agreement on CAP reform on their watch.
Securing an agreement under the Irish Presidency is conceivable. But I am going to argue that the institutional decision-making process between the Council and the Parliament, as well as the linkage with the Multi-annual Frinancial Framework (MFF) negotiations, will make it extraordinarily difficult, even assuming that the European Council will reach an agreement on the next MFF at its next meeting on 7-8 February 2013.
In this post I discuss my understanding of the decision-making process (the ordinary legislative procedure, also known as co-decision) over the next six months.… Read the rest
Cyprus Presidency progress report on CAP reform – direct payment controversies
When the Agricultural Council meets tomorrow and Wednesday (18-19 December) it will discuss the Cyprus Presidency’s progress report on CAP reform. As the first day of the December Council is devoted to the annual bargaining over fish quotas, this report will be presented in a public session (with web streaming) on the morning of Wednesday 19th.
The progress report is drawn up by the Presidency on its own initiative and summarises the main amendments to the four main CAP regulations as well as outstanding issues which are left for the Irish Presidency to resolve. As it is highly unlikely that the Irish Presidency will revisit issues unless they are expressly identified as unresolved (in square brackets), the progress report and the accompanying amended draft regulations give us a good idea of the evolution of the Council’s thinking since the end of the Danish Presidency last June.
In addition to the progress report, the latest drafts of the four regulations can be downloaded using the following links.… Read the rest
Correction: Rural development funds allocation
There has been much interest in the provenance of the figures on the allocation of rural development funding between member states which I discussed in this post earlier this week. In the post I said that these were figures circulated by Herman van Rompuy during the special European Council meeting to discuss the MFF on November 22-23. Having spoken with some people who were present at the Council meeting I can now confirm that Van Rompuy did not circulate these figures at that meeting. I believe the figures were prepared by well-placed sources but they are not official figures and I regret any confusion which my incorrect assignation may have caused.
Thus the proposed allocation remains unknown at this point in time, beyond the reference in the draft Council conclusions that the allocation will be based on objective criteria and past performance as well as well as specific allocations to five member states.… Read the rest