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The German CAP Strategic Plan: The Ambition has yet to Come

The German CAP Strategic Plan has the potential for an ambitious CAP 2023 to 2027. While the debate on the next CAP post-2027 is already starting, in this article we argue that the German government needs to exploit all potential in the current CAP to increase the ambition towards more climate change mitigation and the protection and enhancement of natural resources and biodiversity. The coalition agreement gives them the mandate to do so. […]

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German CAP Strategic Plan: Bold Changes Required

The new funding period of the Common Agricultural Policy has begun. The EU member states, including Germany, have all developed National Strategic Plans to implement the new EU requirements. However, as the following article shows, this reform and its national implementation are not sufficient to achieve environmental, climate, animal wellfare and social objectives. […]

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Reforming CAP in Wartime – New Report

As the last CAP Strategic Plan (Netherlands) has been approved, we launch a report summarising the key aspects of the CAP Strategic Plans approval process that started a year ago. This report is a collection of the work produced throughout the year, a look back on 2022, and what to look for in 2023. […]

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CAP and E-Commerce: Are Quality Schemes Protected?

EU agri-food products protected by quality schemes can face counterfeiting and usurpations in third countries, resulting in significant economic losses for EU producers. The same can happen in the other direction, and with the expansion of e-commerce platforms, these market dynamics have found new avenues to occur. The reform post-2022 of the CAP’s Common Market Organisation has extended the protection of quality schemes’ intellectual property (IP) rights to e-commerce platforms. […]

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Wallonia’s Observation Letter: A plan that fails to address climate and biodiversity crises

Here you’ll find the Observation Letter to Wallonia’s CAP Strategic Plan which ARC2020 has obtained. In no less than 210 points, the Commission exposes a lack of strategy towards healthy, sustainable and economically viable food systems for farmers, as well as incompatibilities and serious shortcomings in the measures proposed to deal with the climate and environmental crises. The Walloon government must review its copy by September 30th  and obtain validation from the Commission so that the plan can enter into force on January 1st 2023.  […]

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A Just and Green CAP and Trade Policy in and Beyond the EU – Part 2

Trade liberalisation enforced by the WTO, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and several bilateral trade agreements largely contributed to the current economic instability in agriculture, but also to the climate and biodiversity crises. Family farmers in the EU and the Global South face unstable low prices and lose access to their land because of priority to export-led production. […]

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Bulgaria’s CAP Strategic Plan: Backsliding on Nature and Biodiversity

The Society for Territorial and Environmental Prosperity (STEP) believes that Bulgaria’s CAP Strategic Plan must be corrected in order to be in line with the objectives of the European Green Deal, the EU’s Biodiversity and Farm to Fork Strategy. In this article, it highlights essential changes to be made, from targets and monitoring to measuring coherence and consistency. […]

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Food Security: Are the CAP Strategic Plans up to the Task?

Soaring grain prices, alongside gas, oil, fertilizers and pesticides, have sparked an unexpected debate on food production in the EU. A dependent and completely overexposed agricultural system has brought with it fear of food insecurity. In this article, we explore the tools that the commission is using to assess the potential of CAP Strategic Plans in reaching food security and propose our own analyses. […]