The proposal from the European Commission last week to reduce the administrative burden of farmers has been described as “meaningless to the point of insult”, by one Irish farm organisation.
The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) said that the proposals would result in “absolutely no improvement for Irish farmers in 2024 or, indeed, any year thereafter”.
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced in early February, in the wake of farmer protests in Brussels, that the commission would propose measures to reduce the administrative burden of farmers.
Last week, the commission came forward with those proposals, part of which was an aim to reduce on-farm inspections by national administrations by up to 50%.
The proposal lists a range of short and mid-term actions that can be taken to achieve simplification for farmers.
The commission also said it would look at ways to assess the quality of the Area Monitoring System (AMS).
However, ICMSA president called the proposals a “rehash and re-announce stunt”.
“The commission proposes to pick a few minor regulations that have no impact on the ground…[and] suggest a 50% reduction in farm inspections while maintaining 100% inspection checks under AMS – so making life easier for the department inspector without any benefit to the farmer.
Another proposal from the commission aims to clarify the use of the concept of force majeure and exceptional circumstances. The commission said this would allow farmers who cannot fulfil all their requirements under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) due to exceptional events, such as floods, to not have penalties imposed.
However, according to Drennan, actual details on this are scant.
“There are no details given on force majeure and the definition of exceptional circumstances. [The commission] is sending out a survey to farmers on what the issues are, as if we didn’t already know,” he said.
“We have regulation after regulation on a more-or-less continuous basis, while the funding under CAP becomes less and less relevant by the day, due to inflation and convergence. The commission can pretend to be listening to farmers, but they are actually playing games and are fooling no-one.”
The ICMSA president also commented on the vote tomorrow in the European Parliament on the Nature Restoration Law.
“The vote…will be very instructive on where our own MEPs stand on an issue which encapsulates perfectly this phenomenon of more and more regulation for less and less direct payments,” he said.
“The Nature Restoration [Law] will impose sever restrictions on the landowners impacted by it, but there is zero budget to implement it and farmers are rightly fearful that it will be a repeat of the [special area of conservation/special protected area] debacle where farmers were treated appallingly by the EU and government,” Drennan added.
He claimed that the commission’s commitment to carry out a survey of farmers was a “delaying tactic”.
“This list of non-actions aimed at non-simplification is just more of the same,” Drennan commented.
He called on the EU and the government here to “decisively move from a model of regulating and coercing farmers to one of collaboration and support”.