The European Commission's proposals for the future Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), EU budget, and Common Market Organisation (CMO) may not yet fully meet the ambitious response needed to address the multiple crises facing agriculture and food systems today. At a time of climate disruption, geopolitical instability, growing inequalities, and a deepening generational crisis in farming, there is a need for stronger public policies, rather than budget cuts and deregulation.
We reject reducing the CAP budget or increasing the renationalisation of agricultural policy. We support maintaining or increasing the CAP budget and strengthening a unified European agricultural framework. Substantial public investment and Member State solidarity are essential for food production, rural development, and the agroecological transition.
We call for CAP support to focus on active farmers, with stronger backing for young, new, and women farmers, small and medium-sized farms, and areas with natural limits. We also urge mandatory payment caps and degressivity to ensure a fairer allocation of public funds.
The CAP must secure decent farmer livelihoods through fair prices, not land-based payments that drive land grabs and industrial farming. All CAP support should advance environmental and climate goals and help farmers shift to agroecological systems.
We recommend establishing public strategic food stocks, fair intervention prices, stronger market regulation, and public risk-management mechanisms to strengthen farmers’ resilience and ensure food sovereignty. While we welcome steps like better school food programmes and crisis-management tools, these additional measures are essential.
As negotiations begin in Parliament and Council, we urge decision-makers to put food sovereignty, fair farm incomes, agroecology, and vibrant rural communities at the core of the post-2027 CAP.