Two Irish MEPs are among the signatories of a letter to the president of the European Commission calling for the withdrawal of the current proposed Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Ciarán Cuffe and Grace O’Sullivan signed off on the letter to President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday (October 28), which was sent from the Green/European Free Alliance (EFA) European Parliament political group.

The letter claims that: “Seven years and nearly €400 billion are about to be wasted.

Agriculture is a big contributor to climate change and biodiversity loss. The world is warming fast and we are losing birds, pollinators and ecosystems at an alarming rate, we cannot squander time nor money.

The letter goes on to argue that the aims of the Green Deal, Biodiversity Strategy and Farm to Fork Strategies “are in jeopardy”.

It points out that the original proposals for the new CAP were made in 2018 by the previous commission.

It claims that, with the introduction of the Green Deal and associated targets, the proposals “became even more outdated than they already were, yet it remained on the table”.

After this week it has also become clear that neither the European Council nor parliament is planning to strengthen the text. We therefore ask you to act. Just as the commission has the right to make proposals, it has the right to withdraw them. We ask you to make use of this right.

“It is time to withdraw the commission’s weak and outdated CAP proposal and present a new one that is in line with the EU’s Green Deal,” the letter states.

Forest reference levels

In other commission-related news, it yesterday (Thursday, October 29) adopted the forest reference levels (FRLs) for each EU member state to apply between 2021 and 2025.

FRLs are “benchmarks to calculate the sum of greenhouse gas removals and emissions from existing forests in each member state”.

FRLs concern managed forest land, which encompasses existing forests that undergo cycles of growth, harvest and regrowth, and forests under various protection schemes, including old growth and primary forests.