The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Greening measures ‘fail environmental criteria’
Eu: Report by Court of Auditors calls for changes to way farmers access CAP payments
Greening measures such as the three-crop rule and Environmental Focus Areas are unlikely to boost the Common Agricultural Policy’s (CAP) environmental and climate performance, claims a new EU report.
The report by the European Court of Auditors found that the new greening payments added more complexity to the system but had only led to changed farming practices on about 5% of EU farmland.
“Greening remains essentially an income support scheme. As currently implemented, it is unlikely to enhance the CAP’s environmental and climate performance significantly,” said Samo Jereb, who was responsible for the report.
The report found that the European Commission had not set “clear, sufficiently ambitious environmental targets” for greening to achieve, and that the budget allocation for greening was not justified.
It recommended that farmers should only have access to CAP payments if they comply with a set of basic environmental norms, and that penalties for non-compliance be introduced.
It also recommended that any agricultural programmes to address environmental needs should include performance targets and funding which reflects the costs incurred and income lost.
In response, the European farmers unions, Copa and Cogeca, said that effective and simple greening measures were vital to ensure that farmers are paid for the good work they do because the market does not reimburse them for public and environmental services.
Union secretary-general Pekka Pesonen added that it was important that greening measures were simplified under a future CAP as farmers have been overburdened by bureaucracy.
He said: In the EU in 2016, 77% of the agricultural area was subject to one or more greening obligations.
“To achieve results, the greening measures have to be more effective and easier to work with so that farmers can deliver.
“A science-based approach that combines international climate and environmental ambitions but also takes into account the impact of trade agreements and recognises the EU’s high production standards could contribute here.”