Plan to streamline farm policy revealed

Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has presented plans to make farmers’ lives easier thanks to a major streamlining of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

On 18 December 2006 the Commission presented a proposal to strip down the rules that govern EU markets for agricultural products, known as Common Market Organisations (CMOs). 

The idea is to do away with the complicated bureaucracy surrounding the EU’s farm policy in hopes that less red tape will reduce costs for the food industry, making it more competitive. 

More than 40 different regulations covering 21 sector-specific CMOs, such as beef, cereals, poultry and eggs, will be replaced with a single law that will harmonise rules on intervention, import-tariff quotas, export refunds, safeguard measures and state aids. 

The move is an integral part of the Commission’s Better-Regulation Agenda and a major step in the process of simplifying the CAP – which accounts for just less than half of the entire EU budget and for nearly 60% of all EU rules. 

However, the proposal does not make any attempt to reform the controversial CAP, often criticised for sustaining unprofitable farms at the expense of taxpayers and distorting world markets. 

These questions will instead be examined in 2008 when the CAP will undergo a ‘Health Check’.

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