When COMAGRI publish their compromise amendments to the Commission’s draft revised CAP regulations, one issue to look out for will be the proposed definition of active farmers. This has been a difficult area in the direct payments regulation dossier because the issue of how to define an active farmer goes to the heart of the decoupled nature of the SPS system.
The item is on the reform agenda because of repeated criticisms of the Court of Auditors, first in the context of its report on SPS implementation and more recently in its report on SAPS implementation in the new member states. The Court complains that many beneficiaries of CAP payments do not appear to be ‘farmers’ as conventionally understood.
There are at least four different themes in the discussion on defining ’active farmers’ in order to better target direct payments to the intended beneficiaries:
(a) To avoid the leakage of payments to beneficiaries whose principal business has nothing to do with farming (for example, golf courses, airports, municipalities);
(b) To avoid the leakage of payments to ‘sofa farmers’, by which is meant persons who own land and gain entitlements to a payment but where the land is not used for production.… Read the rest
