Unprecedented CAP reforms may prove too disruptive
Anyone who thinks their governments, and the EU, are slow to make decisions will recoil in horror from the European Commission’s proposals for CAP reform.
They open up a vista of years of endless negotiations, first on the EU budget, followed by Brexit, and followed by a more torturous than ever before CAP reform.
And the real negotiations start then.
That is because the commission says member states will be able to tailor the CAP to their own specific needs, setting out how they plan to do so in a comprehensive CAP Strategic Plan.
Going on past history, it will take Ireland at least one year to prepare that plan.
Then, we will wait for the commission to verify our strategic plan.
That will probably take six months, judging by how quickly national rural development plans are inspected by the commission.
As usual, the reform sounds bad, with the same old dire warnings of disaster from farmers and environmentalists.
Exaggerated political positions are being assumed by the commission, the Council of Ministers, and the European Parliament, who must eventually agree the reform between the three of them.
As usual, it won’t turn out as bad for farmers as the dire warnings suggest.
And there is one thing we can say for sure about this CAP reform. It will run late, and that is a bad thing, because the limbo during which farmers and the agri-food industry cannot make big decisions, while they wait for the reform, will be lengthened.
The current Common Agricultural Policy finishes in 2020, and it will be no surprise if Irish farmers go into 2021 without a new CAP in place.
The commission proposals foresee that after the EU budget, Brexit, and the bones of CAP reform are agreed, each country in the EU will be asked to define a strategy for the country’s specific needs, while meeting the overall CAP objectives.
The strategy will also set targets for reaching the objectives. Each CAP Strategic Plan will need prior approval from the European Commission to ensure that it remains consistent with the EU-wide objectives, maintains the common nature of the policy, and does not distort the single market, or lead to excessive burdens on beneficiaries or administrations.
And the haggling will continue every year, because the commission proposes that it will assess and verify progress towards achieving targets in the national strategies, in a new annual monitoring and review exercise.
It’s ironic that the commission wants to end the annual administrative chore of paying back unused crisis reserve funds (paid in by farmers off their direct payments), now proposing to roll over this reserve for market measures and exceptional support measures from year to year.
But it proposes to take on an immeasurably more difficult annual chore of verifying national CAP plans.
The proposals are unprecedented in the way they threaten the European Parliament’s and Council of EU Agriculture Ministers’ say on the CAP, if the commission succeeds in its bid for a systematic right of scrutiny for national strategies.
It probably comes as no surprise in Ireland that Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan has come up with hugely disruptive CAP proposals.
It was back in the summer of 2011 when he said water meters would be installed in every home, as he began establishing Irish Water, an institution still evolving seven years later.
He made huge changes in Irish local government in 2014, including the end of town councils.
He introduced the Local Property Tax in 2013, and gender quotas in political parties in 2012, .
Many in rural areas say he destroyed the Leader rural development scheme with his changes.
But he has probably bit off more than he can chew in his bid to completely refurbish the CAP, coinciding with Brexit blowing a hole in the EU’s finances, and EU plans to make CAP spending less than a third of the EU budget, compared to nearly 40% now.
