LYMEC Bureau debates about CAP with Young Farmers
At the occasion of its meeting in Brussels this weekend, the LYMEC bureau met with representatives of the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA, www.ceja.org) for a first exchange of views on the LYMEC campaign “CAP is CRAP: EU budget needs new priorities”. CEJA represents 27 organisations from 21 EU Member States including one observer member, accounting in total for more than one million young farmers in Europe.
Aloys Rigaut, President of European Liberal Youth (LYMEC) underlined: “It is essential for a political party youth organisation like LYMEC to be in contact with the civil society and especially with European youth associations. Such a dialogue is paramount to better frame our political message, make it more acute and powerful. Without a strong European civil society there is indeed simply no political Europe and European political parties have to listen to its representative bodies if they want to be credible”.
Despite many points of disagreement, the exchange of views allowed to identify a few points of convergence with CEJA, for instance about facilitating entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector (cutting red tape) and about ensuring a level playing field between EU-produced and imported food products. CEJA argued in this respect that EU regulation imposes them a series of obligations making their production costs higher (food safety, environment, animal welfare…) whereas food imports do not obey the same rules. In the same manner, they argued it is not normal that EU-produced food shall label GMO products, but not imports. On the other hand, LYMEC Bureau members pointed to the numerous absurdities of the CAP, stressing in particular that quotas/subsidies distort market mechanisms and contribute to global inflation in food prices.
Mette Lykke Nielsen, Bureau Member of LYMEC added: ‘This dialogue was a very good beginning for our ‘CAP is CRAP’ campaign. It has given us some precious first-hand information about the challenges faced today by young farmers in Europe and will help us to better target our campaign in coming months. This experience shall certainly be repreated in others fields in the context of the preparation of EP elections. We can only gain from these dialogues’.
