CAP reform plans: not enough
Last week, EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel unveiled her so-called “health check” of the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP), which fine-tunes the 2003 reforms and contributes to the discussion on future priorities in the field of agriculture, in the context of the budgetary review 2008/2009. It is designed to kick off a wide-ranging six-month consultation: the European Commission is due to return next spring with legislative proposals, which could be adopted by the end of 2008 and come into effect immediately.
Reacting to the Communication of the European Commission, Roger Albinyana i Saigi, President of LYMEC, said: ‘ We cannot be satisfied with such measures. They aim at making the system of direct payments to farmers simpler and more efficient, whereas we simply want to phase out all these subsidies, quotas, price support and other anti-market measures ‘, before adding: ‘The EU budgetary review scheduled next year is a good occasion to strike a new deal, scrap the CAP, abolish the British rebate, and find more intelligent ways to spend EU taxpayer’s money than on cows and potatoes. We need notably to pour more resources into research, environment, and energy policies. The challenges of today are different from those of yesterday and EU policies simply need to adapt. We don’t need a Common Agricultural Policy anymore, what we need are ambitious Common Food Safety and Common Environment Policies’.
Aloys Rigaut, Vice-President of LYMEC underlined: ‘Is it normal that an average EU cow earns 2 euros per day from the EU, which is more than what half of the world’s population lives on? ", before stressing: "We are preparing a pan-European campaign in the context of the EU budgetary review asking for the abolition of the CAP. The European Commission’s agricultural DG should be wound up and responsibility for relevant policies should be passed to the appropriate Commission departments, including those dealing with the environment, trade, health and consumer protection ‘.
