The rural 10% target cannot be monitored

In the autumn of last year, the European Parliament came close to rejecting the Commission’s MFF proposal as the basis for negotiations. In October 2025, the leaders of four of the main political groups in the Parliament – EPP, S&D, Renew and Greens/EFA – wrote to President von der Leyen stating plainly that the Commission proposal had not taken the Parliament’s core requests into consideration and demanding an amended proposal reflecting these requests to allow negotiations with the Parliament to move forward (a copy of this letter was made available by Politico Europe).

In response, the Commission in a non-paper (made available by Euractiv) proposed several amendments to its proposal, which were subsequently included in a speech made by President von der Leyen at a plenary debate of the Parliament on the MFF’s architecture and governance in November 2025.… Read the rest

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).… Read the rest

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.… Read the rest