The Agriculture and Fisheries Council of the EU, bringing together agriculture ministers from the 27 member states, will meet today (Monday, June 28) and tomorrow with a view to ratifying the agreement on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
An agreement was reached on the future of the policy on Friday of last week (June 25) between negotiators from the council, the European Parliament and the European Commission.
The council side of this trilogue was represented by the Portuguese minister for agriculture (and head of the agriculture ministers council) Maria do Ceu Antunes.
The Portuguese minister will now take the deal to her fellow agriculture ministers to get agreement on it, in what is likely to be her final action in the role (Portugal’s term of presidency of the Council of the EU ends on June 30, with Slovenia taking over from July 1, until the end of the year).
If the council gives it the green light, it will then be up to the agriculture committee of the parliament to vote on it (regarded largely as a technicality, as members of the committee comprised the parliament’s negotiating team for the trilogue); and then for the parliament to meet in full (plenary session) to ratify the deal.
The deal may face a greater deal of scrutiny before the full parliament than it will before the agriculture committee. It is understood that no dates have been set yet for these votes in parliament.
Responding to the deal on Friday evening, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue said: “The agreement is provisional, pending approval by the EU’s agriculture ministers at the upcoming Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting.
“In preparation for that meeting, [I and my] officials will study the detail of the proposals when this is made available by the presidency.
“The agreement will also have to be formally ratified by the European Parliament,” the minister noted.
Meanwhile, Tim Cullinan, the president of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA), has again called for the minister to pursue greater national flexibility.
Speaking from Luxembourg this morning, Cullinan argued: “The combined effects of the provisional deal will devastate a cohort of farmers in Ireland. This will have a knock-on effect on the wider sector that will be very damaging for the rural economy.
“Minister Charlie McConalogue has to secure more flexibility to mitigate the negative impact of some of the measures.”
The IFA president concluded: “The Irish government will have to honour its commitments on maximum national co-financing, and on the €1.5 billion from the Carbon Tax fund to protect the viability of tens of thousands of farmers.”