The European Commission refuses to develop agriculture towards sustainable agricultural models, for the sake of the environment and the economy, which pay a decent wage to all farmers and meet society's expectations.
In its presentation on the new CAP 2021-2027 legislative texts, the EC leaves it up to the Member States’ to apply budget cuts. It also disregards volatility, price drops and market crises. As a result, it shoulders the great responsibility for bringing an end both to a common policy and to solidarity within the Member States.
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Subsidiarity and simplification: For ECVC, the EC’s CAP proposal, which is based on simplification and subsidiarity through Strategic Plans and a new delivery model, will lead to a serious fragmentation of the CAP. Despite the existence of the European common objectives framework, the extent of the fragmentation and subsidiarity will exacerbate the differences between farmers across the EU as well as between production, working and economic conditions. It will also distort the way that the single market functions at European level, which will create competition through the distribution of CAP aid.
Responding to crises with insurance and CAP aids does not work: Today, the EU’s agreements with the WTO and free trade agreements entirely determine the EU market. Owing to this, the EU market is subject to price volatility and dominated by the strongest operators i.e. investment funds, the industry and large agrifood distribution companies. Faced with this situation, the Commission (in its legislative proposal) has made no response. Instead, it has avoided the issue by making it the Member States’ responsibility to deal with crisis management through aid and insurance. ECVC is against the allocation of agricultural insurance for market crises because it requires privatising CAP aid. Moreover, it will not solve the crises. ECVC believes that the effective way to deal with the market situation is through public regulation policies and production control.
Aid distribution: ECVC does not agree with the way in which the aid is provided according to the number of hectares that each farmers owns, nor that the aid is decoupled from the food production work. ECVC is in favour of the proposal to have mandatory aid distribution to small-scale and medium-scale farmers. However, ECVC suggests that the Commission clarify and specify what this redistribution involves.
Aid limits: ECVC supports the 60,000EUR limit and rejects the increase to 100,000EUR. That being said, ECVC believes that we should take income and employment into account in all farms and not only in those that receive more than 100,000EUR of aid. For these farms, there should be a limit on the number of workers that the farm hires.
ECVC is evaluating the text and planning meetings with the European Commission over the next few weeks in order to elucidate and check the legislative proposal, since there are many elements that need clarification.
ECVC believes that, through this text, the European Commission not only puts at risk the future of farmers and European food systems, but also jeopardises the cohesion of the European Union.
Contacts:
Andoni Garcia (ECVC Coordinating Commitee): +34 636 4515 69 – ES, EUZ
Genevieve Savigny (Group CAP ECVC) : +33 62 555 1687 – FR, EN, ES
Here you can find the press release of ECVC’s member COAG on the CE legislatives texts (only in Spanish): http://coag.coag.org/post/la-e2809cletra-pequenae2809d-de-la-pac-post-2020-sienta-las-bases-para-dinamitar-218778