The European Commission’s project on changes to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) will most likely appear next week – said the EU Commissioner for Agriculture, Janusz Wojciechowski, on Friday. He emphasized that fallowing would be voluntary and paid.
On Friday evening, Janusz Wojciechowski assured on Polsat News that “he is working on a very serious package, which will soon be presented as a proposal of the European Commission to the European Parliament to the Council, and there will be quite significant changes in the Common Agricultural Policy.”
These will be good changes for farmers, he emphasized.
When asked when this would happen, the commissioner pointed out that it was only a matter of days before the EC’s project on this matter would appear and “it will most likely be next week.”
We must work quickly so that the current European Parliament, which holds its last session in April, can adopt these changes – he added.
What will change in the Green Deal?
When asked about what will change in the Green Deal, the commissioner drew attention to two issues that raised concerns among farmers. The first is to reduce the use of pesticides, which – according to the Commissioner – is in itself the right thing for health reasons. However, he pointed out that it was a bad idea to propose that all countries should equally reduce the use of pesticides by 50 percent, when, for example, in the Netherlands they use 9 kg per hectare, in Poland it is 2 kg and in Finland 0.5 kg.
Ultimately, this proposal has already been withdrawn and will not be processed any further. Perhaps it will come back in some other form sometime in the future. For now, it has been withdrawn and no work is in progress on it, he said.
Changes in fallow land and less bureaucracy
Wojciechowski pointed out that the second issue is fallow land. – At the beginning, there were proposals for it to be 10 percent. fallow. I made it 4 percent. But it has not entered into force and will not enter into force. We are preparing a change to make fallowing voluntary and paid for farmers, he added.
The commissioner informed that another change being prepared is the exclusion of farms up to 10 ha from inspection “in terms of various other requirements”. He pointed out that farms of this size account for over 70% of farms in Poland.
As his statement indicated, a change is also being prepared, the aim of which would be to additionally protect farmers in the future against the requirements resulting from other EU policies, e.g. climate.
So that farmers are not surprised that something new will suddenly appear and this will be a new requirement for them. Nothing like this will happen until 2027 for sure. No other changes will be forced. Farmers will not be subject to any new obligations, he stressed.
This week, European Commission spokesman Olof Gill, in response to Wojciechowski’s similar words, said that the commissioner “spoke on his own behalf, which in no way reflects the official position of the Commission.”
We believe that agriculture, climate policy and the protection of the natural world can go hand in hand. We need both, noted Olof Gill.
He informed that the Commission would soon present a series of proposals aimed at meeting the challenges currently facing EU farmers.
Wojciechowski, referring to the spokesman’s words, admitted that “for today, these are my proposals and prepared by me and my team of collaborators, but in a moment they will be proposals of the entire Commission.”
I am convinced that they will be accepted by the Commission and that they will be accepted by both the Council and the European Parliament, because these are good proposals for farmers, he added.
