Europe's common agricultural policy is broken – let's fix it!
The Lisbon Treaty has been ratified and among it’s political innovations is a “citizens’ petitions” tool. Article 8B says that
“Not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the European Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties.”
Leaked copies of a document from the European Commission’s budget directorate reveal an aspiration to substantially cut agriculture’s share of the EU budget from 2013 onwards.
Mairead McGuinness is an MEP from Ireland and a senior member of the Agriculture Committee. She’s also the new chair ofLUFPG, the informal ‘CAP Reform’ group of MEPs. It appears her website has been hacked by TeAm MoStA from Algeria.
Mairead McGuinness is an MEP from Ireland and a senior member of the Agriculture Committee. She’s also the new chair ofLUFPG, the informal ‘CAP Reform’ group of MEPs. It appears her website has been hacked by TeAm MoStA from Algeria.
4000 dairy farmers with 900 tractors demonstrated outside an EU agricultural ministers meeting in Luxembourg yesterday calling for more aid for the sector. Inside, ministers faced a Franco-German memorandum backed by 20 member states with a series of demands for market distorting measures. In the event the concessions the Commission made are probably the least they could have got away with in the circumstances. Farmers’ organisation COPA immediately condemned them as insufficient.
In one of its most critical ever reports, the National Audit Office has slammed the way in which the Rural Payments Agency has administered Single Farm Payments to farmers. It accused the agency of showing ‘scant regard to protecting public money’. The agency has wasted around £700m, the capital equivalent of building thirty secondary schools.
Earlier in the month I wrote that Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel was holding the line against protesting dairy farmers and a clutch of national agriculture ministers looking for more aid for their troubled farmers. It looks as though I spoke too soon. At this month’s farm council, Commissioner Fischer Boel found a further 280 million euro from the 2010 budget to give to dairy farmers, in addition to measures announced last month.
Earlier in the month I wrote that Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel was holding the line against protesting dairy farmers and a clutch of national agriculture ministers looking for more aid for their troubled farmers. It looks as though I spoke too soon. At this month’s farm council, Commissioner Fischer Boel found a further 280 million euro from the 2010 budget to give to dairy farmers, in addition to measures announced last month.
Until recently, I have walked through Brussels with this grey-blue bag that all participants of the 2008 budget review conference received. In the meantime, it has fallen apart, and I don’t have anything to replace it. This is somewhat similar to the CAP & EU budget debate: the 2008 conference presenting the results of the consultation process briefly attracted broad attention, but subsequently, the debate fizzled out and was overwhelmed by the financial and economic crisis.
The next agricultural commissioner will have the chance to shape the future development of the CAP. So who will it be?