What can be done for farmers? Changing the CAP won’t fix everything. Conclusions from the Agrifish Council meeting

The EU will not leave farmers alone

As we reported on the farmer.pl website, on February 26, 2024, the ministers of agriculture of 27 EU member states gathered in Brussels for a meeting of the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council (Agrifish). One of the most important issues addressed by the Agrifish Council was the crisis in the agricultural sector. The Belgian Presidency asked the meeting to present proposals to improve regulations for European farmers. The European Commission’s proposals were also analyzed, including: simplification of administrative procedures and controls in agriculture. The EU Commissioner for Agriculture, Janusz Wojciechowski, joined the Agrifish Council meeting.

The long-lasting discussions were accompanied by a press conference at which Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski appeared together with David Clarinval, Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium, representing the Belgian Presidency at the meeting. Summarizing the meeting, Clarinval assured the full support of the EU authorities for farmers who – incidentally – were protesting at the same time just outside the windows of the EU administration buildings.

– The most important are the farmers outside this building, who feel the consequences of the very difficult market situation and are afraid for the future. The Belgian Presidency wanted to discuss this issue at European level. In recent weeks, Belgium has been working with the European Commission and Member States. We received over 500 proposals for simplification, mainly calls for greater flexibility. The first series of EC proposals were published at the beginning of February and concerned, among others: GAEC 8 standard, and last week an informal document was published with proposals for solutions that can be quickly implemented. According to the Council, these proposals are good, but insufficient. Reducing the administrative burden is an important but not the only issue. The Council called on the EC to supplement this set of actions with further ones. This is the first step to fulfilling our obligations to farmers. The EU will not leave farmers alone, said David Clarinval.

The most important conclusions and resolutions of the AGRIFISH Council meeting include:

• Council’s support for the decision to partially derogate from the GAEC 8 standard and withdraw the draft SUR;
• Council support for additional safeguards in the proposed renewal of autonomous trade measures for imports from Ukraine (ATM);
• the need to simplify and reduce the administrative burden imposed on farmers;
• changes to the rules of the GAEC 1 standard (applies to the maintenance of three-point linkage);
• greater flexibility in the rules of the GAEC 6 standard (minimum soil cover), taking into account local conditions;
• the Council’s support for the EC’s review of the methodology for assessing the quality of the Area Monitoring System (AMS) – as a result, the AMS system will help reduce the number of inspections on farms by up to 50 percent;
• the need to redefine and clarify the concepts of force majeure and exceptional circumstances;
• the Council’s support for the EC conducting a survey for European farmers for consultation purposes;
• the need to simplify procedures for introducing changes to National Strategic Plans by Member States;
• the need to review the basic act of the Common Agricultural Policy as soon as possible;
• The Council invited the Special Committee on Agriculture to continue to examine the suggestions and proposals discussed by ministers, in line with the political guidance provided by ministers, and to report to the Council;
• the need to take action to improve the situation of European farmers in the medium and long term and the emphasis on their significant role in the food chain;
• the need to continue the strategic dialogue for agriculture with emphasis on the important voice of Member States in this dialogue.

Farmers’ problems do not result only from the Common Agricultural Policy

Both Clarinval and Commissioner Wojciechowski pointed out that farmers’ problems and the resulting demands at protests are not only a matter of EU agricultural policy, but to a large extent of trade and climate policy.

– Apart from some specific domestic problems, farmers want to stop imports and withdraw from the Green Deal. The Green Deal is the European Union’s climate policy, and the issue of imports is trade policy, e.g. the decision regarding Mercosur is not the responsibility of the Commissioner for Agriculture – emphasized Janusz Wojciechowski.

– In the short term, the Commission has open solutions that the Council supported and wants to return to quickly. There is to be greater flexibility in GAEC standards, simplification of strategic plans, and better coordination of farmers’ inspections. These are important changes to the CAP that can be introduced quickly, during this term. There are also more structural things, such as changing the basic text of the CAP in a long-term vision. In addition, there are activities that go beyond the CAP, regarding environmental protection, international markets and geopolitics. This affects agriculture, but solutions in this area can be found not by the ministers of agriculture and not by Commissioner Wojciechowski, but rather by our environmental colleagues or the prime ministers of each country, said David Clarinval.

Commissioner Wojciechowski declares his readiness to introduce changes to the CAP. Will GAEC standards become eco-schemes?

Despite the reservation that not all farmers’ problems are influenced by the Common Agricultural Policy, Commissioner Wojciechowski assured his will to take action to protect farmers. As an example, he gave, among others: the Commission’s will to refrain from penalizing farmers who were unable to meet, for example, conditionality requirements. This would result from the recognition of farmers as operating in extraordinary circumstances due to market destabilization, the war in Ukraine and the increase in production costs.

– The intention is to allow Member States to treat farmers flexibly and not penalize them in 2024 if they are unable to meet the elements of conditionality that limit their decisions. Member States and farmers expect the next step and greater flexibility also in the future, emphasized Janusz Wojciechowski.

In response to this need, the commissioner suggested the idea of ​​”transforming” the mandatory GAEC standards into voluntary actions similar to eco-schemes. He also mentioned the idea of ​​increasing the limit of de minimis aid.

– I will propose that we consider the idea of ​​shifting certain elements of conditionality. In my opinion, better results can be achieved within voluntary eco-schemes, because incentives always work better than forcing farmers to perform certain practices. There was also a proposal to increase the limit of de minimis aid and I will suggest that the Commission do so. Member States should be able to provide assistance to farmers in crisis, said Commissioner Wojciechowski.

Interestingly, Commissioner Wojciechowski declared his readiness and possibility of opening the basic act of the CAP already this term.

– The Council fully expects the opening of the basic act and the revision of conditionality. I think that we can count on support for such a proposal in the Council and in the European Parliament too, taking into account the letter from President Lins (Norbert Lins, chairman of the AGRI Committee in the EP – editor’s note). Theoretically, it is possible even in this term to do in a quick procedure, some changes that will meet the needs of farmers – this is action in the medium term. In the short term, we can adopt a more flexible interpretation of the regulations and simply not punish farmers. If we want to meet farmers’ demands by the end of the current CAP in 2027, we should do so by amending the basic act, i.e. the regulation of December 2, 2021 on National Strategic Plans – explained Janusz Wojciechowski.

The CAP and the Green Deal were not problematic until the war?

During the press conference, the gathered journalists asked questions about the Common Agricultural Policy and the Green Deal: if no one was against them when the relevant legal acts were adopted, where did the 500 proposals for changes at the AGRIFISH Council meeting and farmers’ demands against the Green Deal come from today?

– The war in Ukraine and the Green Deal are two difficult conditions that appeared after the Common Agricultural Policy was established, and they significantly changed the situation compared to the reality that prevailed before – noted David Clarinval.

– I heard from one of the protesting farmers: “we would be able to cope with the Green Deal if it weren’t for what happened on the market as a result of the war in Ukraine.” The Common Agricultural Policy was politically agreed in June 2021, the legislation entered into force in December 2021, and this was before the Russian aggression against Ukraine, said Janusz Wojciechowski.

Clarinval and Wojciechowski also commented on the suggestion that farmers are becoming a privileged group.

– If farmers were privileged, we would not have lost three million farms over the last decade – replied Commissioner Wojciechowski.

Janusz Wojciechowski also emphasized that changes in the CAP will not weaken the EU’s climate and environmental ambitions.

– If we propose it as eco-schemes (practices now classified as GAEC standards – editor’s note), many farmers will be very willing to do it voluntarily, with the help of financial incentives. There are sometimes complaints about eco-schemes, but farmers willingly participated in them and there is no risk that any part of the budget will be lost because farmers were not able to use them. This shows that our farmers want to act for the environment, but with incentives, not coercion. Then you achieve better results – said Janusz Wojciechowski.

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