Tag: CAP

Conservationists angered by efforts to “gut” Europe’s future farm policy are banking on the full European Parliament to protect the environmental standards proposed by the European Commission.

Around €100 billion out of a global CAP budget of €363 billion for the period 2014-2020 will be dedicated to the protection of natural resources after last week's agreement on the EU's long term budget, writes Dacian Cioloş. The challenge now is to define concrete measures to make a real difference for the environment and to secure the long term competitiveness of EU farmers.

EU ministers will hold a meeting in Brussels tomorrow (13 February) to deal with the fallout from the horsemeat scandal as investigations in France and the UK continued yesterday.

The Romanian prime minister said on Monday (11 February) that any fraud over horsemeat sold as beef had not happened in his country and he was angered by suggestions it might have been.

The European Parliament on Wednesday (6 February) overwhelmingly backed reform to end decades of over-fishing and restore EU sea stocks to healthy levels by 2020.

A dispute over how far to open agricultural markets to imports is holding up a free trade agreement between Canada and the European Union, officials familiar with the negotiations said on Tuesday (5 February).

French President François Hollande faces the awkward prospect of walking away from this week's European Union summit having accepted a cut in the bloc's agricultural spending for the next seven years.

The EU has launched a rescue plan for Europe’s dwindling honeybee colonies: a 24-month ban on three widely-used neonicitinoid pesticides that the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) says pose “high acute risks” to pollinators. 

Four American senators have expressed concern that possible trade talks between the European Union and United States may not dismantle longstanding EU barriers to US pork, beef, poultry and other farm products.

The European Parliament’s agriculture committee has voted to weaken key environmental proposals made by the European Commission while agreeing to reduce subsidies to big farms. These and other proposals will be considered by the full Parliament in March.

Reacting to the furore over the discovery of horse meat in Irish beef patties, MEPs on Wednesday (23 January) called for stronger EU labelling laws as Ireland's agriculture minister defended the safety of his country’s meat products.

The EU should support rural public education programmes in Africa, with a special focus on women, to facilitate adoption of sustainable farming practices, says Hailemariam Teklewold, a researcher at the University of Gothenburg.

The European Commission  doesn't plan to give the green light to new genetically modified crops in the coming months, as it wants first an agreement on the draft legislation that would allow member governments to decide individually whether to grow or ban GM plants, a spokesperson said yesterday (22 January).

Germany's agriculture minister described as "absurd" the European Commission's proposals to keep 7% of EU farmland fallow for environmental reasons and she urged it to reconsider.

A UN rights official is urging the European Parliament to require that the EU monitor how Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies and other support for growers affect farmers in developing nations.

The number of people who go hungry in Africa’s poorest countries is growing despite advances in food production, say Oxfam researchers who urge European donors and African governments to invest more in small farms and give rural people a bigger stake in decision-making.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) yesterday (8 January) opened a public consultation on the safety of Aspartame after studies in 2010 linked the sweetener to health conditions.

European Union fisheries ministers have hammered out a 2013 quota deal, which they said struck a compromise between protecting over-exploited stocks such as haddock and plaice and safeguarding fishermen's livelihoods.

The future of Europe’s agriculture policy shouldn’t be held hostage by the EU’s budget impasse, Ireland’s agricultural minister said in calling for negotiations to move forward even if final figures on spending are unknown until spring.

Food production is water intensive. This ‘virtual water’ both represents a challenge and an opportunity, since it can be exported worldwide, writes Lars Hvidtfeldt.

Battles over financing and revamping Europe’s agricultural policy are almost certain to push implementation of the future programme beyond next year’s deadline, government and industry officials say.

France plans to shift some agricultural subsidies from crop growers to livestock farmers to narrow a gap in revenue and productivity between the two sectors in the European Union's biggest farming economy.

The European Commission’s proposal for a soil directive has been stalled for more than six years, but Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik hopes the newly announced Environment Action Programme (EAP) will eventually revive negotiations on the controversial proposals.

The European Court of Auditors has identified many cases of fraudulent agricultural payments for unutilised land among the new EU members of Central and Eastern Europe, and made recommendations to address the problem in an unprecedented report, published today (27 November).