Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue has said that the deadline of January 1, 2022 for EU member states to hand in their Common Agricultural Policy Strategic Plans (CSP) to the European Commission is “a challenging one”.
The minister was speaking to members of the media last week at an informal meeting of EU agriculture ministers, where ministers spoke about the the co-existence of urban and rural environments.
Minister McConalogue commented: “We’re working very hard at the moment in relation to putting our CAP Strategic Plan together.
“We’ve just finished our consultation process with farm organisations and we’re working towards the deadline of January 1, to have our Strategic Plan submitted.
“We’re certainly working on the basis that [that] will be the deadline. It’s a challenging one, but it’s one we’re making every efforts to make,” he noted.
He went on: “Central to that, as in other member states, will be the engagement and consultation with farmers and all stakeholders [including] members of the public in relation to ensuring there is as much involvement and ownership of the CAP Strategic Plan at national level in advance of it being submitted to the commission.”
The CSPs for each member states have to be submitted to the European Commission by January 1. The commission will then ratify these place based on the overarching aims of the CAP.
The minister also reiterated his view that the CAP deal agreed at the end of June (and passed last week by the Agriculture Committee of the European Parliament) “was a good and reasonably well-balanced agreement”.
“We believe there is significant commonality, which is important, but also the opportunity to have national plans for member states which work well for their farmers.
“Overall, it’s a good balance and one which sets agriculture up at European level for the challenges in the years ahead,” he added.
The meeting last week focused on the future of rural areas in the EU. On this issue, Minister McConalogue commented: “There are a lot of opportunities now. Things have moved and shifted a lot during the pandemic in relation to the opportunities for employees to work in rural areas, which would not necessarily have been available before.
“So it’s really important in terms of how we present and put together our policy at European level that we take account of that and use the opportunity that is there to rebalance the population and that spread within our countries.”
He argued that this would give member states the opportunity to develop rural areas; reduce pressures on urban areas; and integrate investment between urban and rural.
“The European-wide policy in that regard is going to be very important,” he highlighted.