The EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Janusz Wojciechowski has said that a stronger Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) will be needed beyond 2027.
The commissioner made the comments as he addressed a special hearing of the European Parliament Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI) marking 60 years of CAP today (Tuesday, November 8).
The new CAP 2023-2027, due to come into force from next January, includes a series of policy reforms and a strong emphasis on results and performance.
However, Commissioner Wojciechowski signaled to MEPs that more will need to be done in the future.
“We know what’s going to happen up to 2027 but there is a post-2027 as well. We need a stronger CAP beyond 2027 because 0.4% GDP spent on food security is too little.
“That’s not going to give us food security in the face of the challenges we’re currently dealing with, that farmers are currently grappling with. But I appreciate that is material for a conference in its own right,” he said.
The commissioner said the value and role of CAP should be appreciated in light of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“We have food security in the European Union and we have our farmers and the agri-food sector to thank for that. This is thanks also to the Common Agricultural Policy.”
Wojciechowski added that CAP should “not act in isolation”.
“It should act in tandem with other policies and sometimes it does, but not always. What we should ensure is that other policies also contribute to rural development,” he said.
“We don’t want to lose agricultural land and we don’t want to lose farmers but we are losing them unfortunately. From 2005-2014, we lost four million farms. In 2010-2020 we lost another three million farms.
“The decline has slowed but it is still a decline and we shouldn’t allow it to continue at this rate,” he said.
The commissioner said that the EU Parliament had “a major role” in two CAP reforms including maintaining its “community character”.
The hearing was also addressed by Franz Fischler who held the role of EU Commissioner for agriculture and rural development from 1995 to 2004.
He said that the past 60 years of CAP can be divided into three phases: The pioneering phase to supply food to post-war Europe; the reform phase due to over production; and the current third phase to reconcile the policy with social and environmental concerns.
“The CAP was the first fully integrated European policy and has remained so to this day. Farmers have performed true pioneering deeds in economic, legal and administrative terms.
“Unfortunately, over the course of time farmers have increasingly lost their pioneering role, mainly because it has never been possible to adapt the relevant articles of the [EU] treaty to the rapidly changing circumstances.
“As a result, the issues that are so important today such as climate and environmental protection or biodiversity are regulated in other chapters of the treaty and agriculture is never able to take the lead in these areas, despite it being the area hardest hit by climate change and having the largest carbon sink on land.
“Agriculture’s role as a contributor to climate change is also only addressed elsewhere in the treaties,” he said.
Fischler called for a modern list of objectives in agricultural policy and a reorganisation of the relationship between structural cohesion and the environmental policy.
He also noted that the application of competition law to processing chains and producer groups varied between member states.
The former commissioner added that in the longer term it should not be acceptable that member states resist binding provisions, which he said are “increasingly made optional”.
“We should always remember that the Common Agricultural Policy is a boon for agriculture and society as a whole,” he said.
“If today we had to start all over again with the Common Agricultural Policy in the European Union, we would probably not succeed.
“Therefore let us nurture the CAP and develop it with a lot of creativity and care,” Fischler told MEPs.