The Agriculture and Fisheries Council meets today (Monday) and tomorrow (Tuesday) in Brussels, and CAP post 2020 is on the agenda.
Ministers from the EU member states will have a public debate on the post 2020 CAP reform package. This is to discuss the progress report tabled by the presidency on the work done in the Council preparatory bodies so far.
In public session the Council will consider the presidency progress report (15027/18) on the work carried out on all the Commission proposals of the CAP reform package:
a regulation on CAP strategic plans (9645/18 + ADD 1)
a regulation on financing, managing and monitoring of the CAP (9634/18 + ADD 1)
a regulation on a common market organisation of agricultural products (9556/18)
ARC2020 most recently covered this process in the article below, where we outlined some areas of concern regarding the report by MEP Garcia on the Commission’s CAP Strategic Plan Regulation.
CAP | Will Environment Committee Flex its New Found Muscles?
Indeed the Strategic Plan is the area which has seen the most proposed amendments: In total, there are 5253 amendments on the strategic plan, including 448 tabled by the rapporteur.
Amendments will be ready in English in early January. From early next year on, MEPs from the different parliamentary groups will try to develop compromises. While committee votes may happen in February or March, it is still unclear whether there will be time to have the full plenary vote before the Parliamentary elections of May 2019.
As IFOAM EU reported earlier this month: “The next Parliament and its committees will have to be formed before negotiations can begin with the Council in the second half of 2019.”
The biggest change in CAP proposed by the Commission is a new delivery model which gives member states more flexibility in spending. Member states must also write their own Strategic Plans, based on nine objectives. The Commission will approve these, subject to EU rules on consistency and the single market. Result indicators will be agreed at EU level, with progress towards objectives and targets defining these indicators.
While there is much in the official EU documents and information on how there will be enhanced environment and climate requirements, critics have pointed to how vague the Commission’s CAP proposal is, and how unconnected it is to other relevant EU policy positions, such as on the SDGs, Paris Agreement, Water Framework Directive and more.
You can watch the meeting live here or below.
Read the Council’s background info here. Provided press info is here. See here for a timeline of progress so far.
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