Tag: cap budget

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The likely size of the CAP budget in the next MFF – reprise

17 March 2026. This post is a revised version of the original post that takes account of some additional information as described in the post.

The likely size of the CAP budget in the next programming period 2028-2034 has been highly contentious since the publication of the Commission’s MFF proposal last July. Among agricultural stakeholders, the AGRI Committee in the Parliament, and the AGRIFISH Council, the amount available for the CAP under its two Pillars in the current programming period was compared with the size of the minimum ring-fenced amount for CAP income support in the proposal and found wanting. The Commission, on the other hand, has insisted on the potential for a larger CAP budget depending on the choices made by Member States. In its most recent Fact Sheet ‘Unlocking synergies integrating EU funding for farming and rural communities’ published in January 2026, it claims “the EU budget in support to farmers and rural communities for 2028-2034 can be at the same level or even higher than the current CAP allocation 2021-2027”.… Read the rest

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Potential increase in CAP funding in next MFF

The figures in Table 1 have been slightly revised since the original post to calculate the flexibility amount as 25% of a country’s NRPF financial allocation less its minimum ring-fenced amount for CAP income support (from which the allocation for CAP investment supports for farmers and foresters should be deducted). In the original post I had based the calculation on the NRPF general allocation.

Commission President von der Leyen sent a letter to the Cypriot Presidency of the Council and to the President of the European Parliament yesterday 6 January 2026, in which she proposed to make additional resources available as of 2028 to address the needs of farmers and rural communities (with thanks to Politico Europe for the link).

This letter was sent on the same day as the Cyprus Presidency invited all Agriculture Ministers to a meeting also attended by the Commissioners for agriculture, trade and health to provide reassurances to Italy and other Member States to sign up to the contentious EU-Mercosur free trade agreement on Friday.… Read the rest

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How big will the CAP budget be in the next MFF?

The answer to this question is of course that we cannot know for certain at this stage. Under the Commission proposal the CAP will be merged into the proposed National and Regional Partnership Fund (NRPF) along with all other shared management funds where currently Member States receive pre-allocated amounts. Under the new arrangement, there would be only one pre-allocated envelope for Member States. There is a minimum ring-fenced amount for what is now referred to as CAP income support interventions (plus some fisheries support) of €295.7 billion. But the final amount allocated to CAP interventions will depend on how Member States allocate their NRPF resources in their NRP Plans.  

It is no surprise that the initial response from farm organisations and stakeholder groups to the Commission’s CAP proposal focused on the budget allocation, although how the money is spent is at least equally important. I also did this in my first post following publication of the Commission’s MFF and CAP proposals (see “The Commission’s CAP budget proposal in the next CAP”).… Read the rest

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What impact will degressivity and capping have?

In my previous post, I calculated the size of the amounts that could be allocated to the degressive area-based income support payment using the minimum and maximum amounts of aid per hectare proposed in the NRPF Regulation of 130 EUR and 240 EUR, respectively. This payment is intended to provide area-based income support for eligible hectares to farmers to address income needs. The purpose of the exercise was to examine the potential allocations to other CAP instruments, for example, agri-environment-climate actions, depending on how much Member States allocated to the degressive area-based payment.

The limitation of that calculation is that it assumed that all hectares would receive these amounts, and thus it took no account of the potential impact of degressivity and capping. In this post, I try to provide a crude estimate of the likely impact of degressivity and capping for several Member States. It turns out that the degressivity and capping rules, though they seem sharp, will have a limited impact in practice in many countries.… Read the rest

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Commission proposal could allow significant increase in CAP basic payments in many countries

Initial reactions to the publication of the Commission’s proposals for the next CAP and their budgetary implications focused on the overall reduction in the CAP budget for income support (the minimum €296 billion ring-fenced within the National and Regional Partnership Fund). In a previous post, I calculated this reduction to be 15% on a like-for-like basis compared to the current income support under the CAP in current prices. Making a comparison with the current total CAP budget will depend, in addition, on how much Member States will allocate to the non-income support elements of the CAP (including, for example, Co-operation projects (LEADER, EIPs) as well as Knowledge Exchange (AKIS)), which cannot be known at this stage.

However, a deeper dive into the provisions of the relevant Regulations suggests that things are not so simple. Commissioners Serafin and Hansen have promised that farmers can continue to receive the same money under the proposed CAP as they do at present.… Read the rest

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The Commission’s CAP budget proposal in the next MFF

Please note that I have updated and revised some of the commentary in this post in a later one here. This later post gives a a more optimistic view of the likely size of the CAP budget though still with caveats. I would urge readers to also read this later post in conjunction with this one. I have left this post online for the record.

The publication of the Commission’s MFF proposals and related legislative proposals on Wednesday 16 July was chaotic, in part it seems because negotiations within the Commission went down to the wire right up to the afternoon of the day of publication. Publication of the key texts was delayed, and indeed the NPRF Regulation (see below) only became available on the EU Register of Commission Documents early morning Friday 18 July.

As far as concerns the CAP proposal in the MFF, this chaotic delivery led to a bit of a communications disaster.… Read the rest

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Fitting the CAP into the next MFF long-term budget

The Commission Communication on The road to the next multiannual financial framework published in February 2025 put forward several proposals for the reform of the MFF structure prior to the formal legislative proposal now pencilled in for July 2025. For the Commission, the key priority is the scale of the budget and the means to finance what it sees as inevitably greater expenditure in the coming programming period. It notes in bold print on page one of the Communication that Europe needs to square the circle: “there cannot be an EU budget fit for our ambitions and notably ensuring the reimbursement of NextGenerationEU, and, at the same time, stable national financial contributions without introducing new own resources”.

The arguments for increased EU budget expenditure are well known. On this occasion they are amplified by the needs to support a surge in defence spending, to address the lagging competitiveness of European industry as identified in the Draghi report and to support the Clean Industrial Deal, as well as to start repayments of the borrowing undertaken to fund the Next Generation EU.… Read the rest

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When the CAP budget pendulum finally stopped swinging

In the early hours of Tuesday 21 July 2020, around 5.30 am, after four days and nights of negotiations, European Council leaders reached agreement on both the Next Generation EU recovery instrument and the Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF) for the period 2021-2027. Reaching unanimous agreement among 27 leaders who entered the negotiations with widely different positions was an astounding political achievement. And although the inevitable compromises were accompanied by expressions of regret, it is extraordinary that every leader has expressed satisfaction with the final outcome.

There are many aspects of the European Council conclusions that warrant analysis: the agreement that the EU for the first time can issue debt to fund a stimulus package to address the catastrophic economic fall-out from the coronavirus pandemic; the future links between EU financial transfers to countries and the rule of law; the framework set out for additional own resources in the coming years; the continued relevance of budget rebates: and the extent to which the final outcome succeeded in ‘modernising’ the budget to reflect the EU’s new priorities.… Read the rest

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Coronavirus uncertainty as CAP decisions are postponed

There is increasing focus on how the coronavirus pandemic is likely to affect agricultural markets, food supply chains and farm incomes (for example, the series of IFPRI Resources and Analyses on COVID-19). Panic buying of long-life staples – as well as toilet roll, of course – led to temporary shortages on supermarket shelves but supplies were very quickly replenished.

In the medium-term, there are concerns that labour shortages, logistical difficulties in transporting goods across borders and falling export demand have the potential to cause disruption. The various actors in the European food chain issued a statement on 19 March calling attention to likely operational difficulties and asking the Commission to ensure that free movement of goods within the single market can continue, including through managing ‘green lanes’ at borders, to allow the food chain to function effectively.

The European Milk Board has called on the Commission to start preparing the launch of a voluntary milk supply reduction scheme as it expects processing capacity will not be sufficient to handle the volume of milk farmers are able to produce.… Read the rest

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President Michel’s solution to the MFF conundrum

In my previous post I discussed the challenges facing European Council President Charles Michel as he took over responsibility from the Finnish Presidency to prepare the draft conclusions on the Multi-annual Financial Framework for the coming meeting of the European Council on 20 February next.

The Finnish Presidency proposal had been attacked on all sides as unsatisfactory. Yet, in that previous post, I speculated that Mr Michel was unlikely to hear anything very different to what the Finnish Presidency had heard when charged with forwarding the ‘negotiating box with figures’ to the December 2019 meeting of the European Council. Thus, I did not expect Michel’s draft conclusions to be dramatically different to the figures in the Finnish Presidency’s December proposal.

On the other hand, I noted that the new Commission’s flagship proposal for the European Green Deal had been published after the Finnish Presidency had prepared its final draft of the negotiating box, and I wondered if this might be sufficient to reframe the conversation between the ‘frugal Five’ and net recipients on the overall size of the EU budget.… Read the rest