According to a new policy note by ClientEarth, the EU COVID19-recovery plan is a missed opportunity to make agriculture more sustainable – ‘Instead of tying these resources to effective green conditions, the Council and European Parliament have given Member States carte blanche.’ Hans Wetzels has more. […]
“Integration between the CAP reform and the European Green Deal is poor or unrealised.” That’s according to a new policy analysis, written by ARC2020’s analyst Matteo Metta and Agricultural Economist Dr. Sebastian Lakner. Commissioned by MEP Martin Hausling (Greens/EFA) this timely report pours cold water over many of the claims for improved environmental performance in the emerging CAP, which is currently in trilogues. A number of CAP solutions are proposed. […]
40 scientific experts have come together today to release a paper on the role CAP plays in trying to make farming sustainable. Below we republish the summary of this paper, and provide a link to download the paper in full. Led by Guy Pe’er, and including our own Matteo Metta, the paper is critical of both the initial CAP proposal by the Commission from 2018, and more critical again of the positions taken by the Council and Parliament in October 2020. Important reading in the current trilogue context. […]
As trilogues to decide the future of CAP progress behind closed doors, the business-as-usual lobby is fighting its corner with some level of exacerbation. They are annoyed with the Commission, with the scientific community, and with young people in the decision-making corridors. Fridays for Future and a host of civil society stakeholders want the Commission to Withdraw the CAP, and the case for doing just this is mounting, as the chasm between the European Green Deal and CAP widens. […]
The European Commission has initiated the process of building a vision for rural Europe for 2040. But to be genuinely valuable, a visioning exercise should look no further than the near future. ARC2020 president Hannes Lorenzen envisions the next seven years, looking ahead to 2027 before bringing us back to 2021 and the present day. […]
27 civil society organisations including ARC2020 have co-signed an open letter to the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen calling on the Commission to withdraw its CAP proposal in order to safeguard the European Green Deal. […]
Here Hannes Lorenzen gives his insights into the Commission’s current rural vision process, what led to it, what other processes are driven more by civil society, and how we can all work with the European Green Deal and other initiatives to help rural areas blossom. […]
After 48 hours of intense debate in Luxembourg, the Council of Minsters agreed its position on the post-2020 CAP package in the early hours of Wednesday morning. This means that once the Parliament reaches its final position Friday, trilogue discussions on the CAP reform can proceed. So what did Europe’s ag minister’s decide on? […]
This week, the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers have set a direction for CAP which fundamentally ignores the Commission’s European Green Deal (EGD), and, by extension, the biodiversity and climate crises that led to the EGD. […]
This week is an important one in Europe, with both the Council of Ministers and the Parliament meeting on CAP. MEPs have a plenary vote upcoming later this week . This means the Parliament will adopt an overall, established position for the next stage – trialogue negotiations with Council and Commission. Here we link to all amendments and provide a quick guide to voting for and against certain amendments. […]
Next week, likely on October 20, the European parliament will vote on a supposedly historical reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which accounts for over one third of the EU annual budget. But as it stands, it is rather set to become a historical failure of rather catastrophic proportions. Op-Ed by Nina Holland, Martin Pigeon and Hans van Scharen, researchers at Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) […]
The three biggest groupings in the European Parliament – Renew Europe, the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and the European People’s Party (EPP) – have come together to launch an attack on the environment elements of the CAP proposal. […]
A number of organisations have come together to argue that CAP must: have a clear direction and robust governance; not support or incentivise any harmful practices or practices incompatible with the Green Deal; empower farmers and rural actors to be drivers of positive change. And the Commission should step up at trilogue stage to align CAP with the European Green Deal. […]
The German presidency of the EU has made some severe proposals to neuter environmental aspects of the upcoming CAP plan. German Agriculture Minister Julia Kloeckner has proposed weakening areas dedicated to nature, taking money from eco-schemes, and potentially protecting CAP from the EU Commission’s flagship EU Green Deal. […]
With big farms gobbling up nearly half of the CAP pie, direct payments are exacerbating income inequality among farmers – whilst fuelling the destruction of the very environment upon which farming depends, finds a new study by Murray Scown, Kimberly Nicholas and Mark Brady. […]
Agricultural and Rural Convention