MEPs back moderate changes to farm policy

Pointing to the ongoing commodity price crisis and the huge diversity of situations faced by European farmers, Parliament’s agiculture committee yesterday (7 October) called on the Commission to scale down its proposed reform of agricultural policy.

Following the examination of the thousand or so amendments tabled by MEPs to the Commission’s original proposal for reform of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (the so-called ‘CAP health check’), the House’s agriculture committee adopted a series of draft reports backing: 

• Smaller cuts to direct support for farmers than those proposed by the Commission; 
• more flexibility for member states to give national aid to farmers; 
• maintaining the link between subsidies and production, and;
• retaining intervention schemes for the grain, meat and dairy sectors.  

The draft reports also say a smaller propotion of the overall CAP budget should be transferred to member states’ rural development programmes and ask that milk quotas be increased by only 1% over the next two years, while the Commission has proposed an immediate 2% rise (EURACTIV 07/02/08).

The high number of amendments and heated debates surrounding both the issue of milk quotas and that of reducing direct payments to bigger farms to finance new rural development policy (‘modulation’) underlined the diversity of the situations faced by farmers in the EU.

Deciding on milk quotas, for example, will require the right balance to be struck between those EU farmers who suffer from low sales prices and want to keep the quotas, and those who want to increase their production to profit from exports.

But prior to yesterday’s vote, political groups and the rapporteur managed to negotiate a series of compromise amendments on the main points of the Commission’s package and all, excepted the one on milk sector, have been approved by the committee. Socialist rapporteur Luis Manuel Capoulas Santos (PES, PT) described the compromises as “a victory for the farmers” and for a fairer CAP based on solidarity.

Parliament’s role in deciding the future of the CAP is currently only consultative. But the MEPs hope that the French EU Presidency will give the House a say on the issue, under the co-decision process, ahead of the expected ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, which would make agiculture a shared power between the Council and the Parliament. 

“This vote gives us the basis for negotiation with the French Presidency,” said a hopeful Capoulas Santos. 

The Parliament’s plenary vote on the report is scheduled for 19 November.

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