Ireland facing an uphill battle on CAP budget
IRELAND faces an uphill battle convincing other EU governments to make up the budget shortfall from Brexit.
The bloc is set to lose out on an estimated €14bn a year after the UK leaves, but a group of budget hawks, led by the Netherlands, does not want the hole to be filled.
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is one of two main budget lines facing the chop, along with regional subsidies, which together make up 70pc of the bloc’s €150bn a year budget.
EU leaders will this Friday have a first reflection on the post-2020 EU budget, following European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker’s call for “sensible savings” rather than swingeing cuts.
A Commission paper last week outlined three options for future farm payments — maintaining spending (but funnelling more money to small farmers), slashing the budget by 30pc or cutting it by 15pc.
The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) said the Government should not “contemplate any of the options” which it said “would shut down agriculture and rural Ireland”.
“This is a clear attempt to ‘soften up’ the European agri sector for a cut in the CAP budget, and it is totally unacceptable and it won’t work,” IFA president Joe Healy said.
Independent MEP Marian Harkin has said the Government needs to “resist the numbers being presented” by the Commission and push other countries to make up the budget shortfall.
The European Commission options paper is intended to prod national governments into boosting their budget contributions, with one official saying the worst-case scenario of a 30pc cut in the CAP will not materialise.
The EU estimates the increase should be more than 1.1pc but less than 1.2pc — “1.1x”, according to budget commissioner Gunther Oettinger — which would mean a boost of €100bn or more.
Meanwhile, EU agriculture ministers ruled out mandatory cuts in farm subsidies post-2020.
At a meeting in Brussels on Monday, they agreed that cuts or moves to redistribute payments to smaller or more climate-friendly farms should be voluntary, and left up to national authorities to decide.
“Member States should be given flexibility in efforts to improve the targeting and fairness of direct payments,” agriculture minister Michael Creed said at the meeting.