McGuinness welcomes Commissioner’s support for EU agriculture budget
NEW EU policy priorities cannot be funded by taking money from existing policies, Mairead McGuinness MEP and Vice-President of the European Parliament underlined during a debate with an EU Commissioner on the future of EU finances in Strasbourg this week. The debate provided some welcome reassurance that the EU agriculture budget would not face severe cuts, as has been muted.
“I welcome comments made in the debate by the EU’s Budget Commissioner Günther Oettinger who stressed the importance of the Common Agriculture Policy and Cohesion Policy, emphasising that these policy areas cannot be subjected to severe cuts, as is being muted.”
Agriculture and cohesion policy should not be severely cut as both areas have to remain up to the task, the Commissioner told MEP McGuinness.
“The debate centered on the Commission’s reflection paper on the Future of EU Finances, which moves beyond the negative narrative of recent times, which was pointing to attacks on the Common Agriculture policy budget. This more nuanced debate on the budget is a welcome development. Rural areas cannot be asked to pay for new priorities. These new priorities will need fresh money,” said McGuinness.
“Farmers are being asked to do more for climate change mitigation, for biodiversity and for the environment. There is also an acknowledgement in the paper that a greater focus is needed on risk management measures to avoid unexpected price and income shocks. This paper makes some far reaching proposals on the budget implications of choices which the EU has to make. Some of the proposals for agriculture would involve a shift away from direct payments as currently constructed towards more targeted support for the delivery of “public goods”.
“If this path is chosen in any future reform of the CAP, we must avoid increasing bureaucracy,” she cautioned.
The long running debate about the distribution of payments across the EU with 80pc of farmers receiving under €5,000 each, and 80pc of payments going to 20pc of farmers resurfaces in the Budget paper.
“I expect this debate to intensify with a focus on reducing large individual payments. Capping of payments was supported by the European Parliament in the last reform of the CAP, but not all member states were in favour. The budget options include more targeted support for disadvantaged areas, risk management measure, new agri-environment measures. In some scenarios, national co-financing of payments and regionally adapted measures are discussed.”
On the issue of distribution of payments between farmers, McGuinness said this will arise again as we look to future changes to the CAP. It is a source of debate and anger between farmers and is often questioned by non-farmers.
“The future discussions on also must focus on the income situation in agriculture, which is difficult in many sectors”, McGuinness added.
Apart from the budget proposals and possible reforms of the CAP, the issue of sustainability of the food supply chain requires action to address unfair trading practices. “This is an issue which we expect Commissioner Hogan to come forward with proposals on in 2018. In Ireland, we need to start the debate on the EU budget.
“A hard Brexit with the UK ending its contributions to the EU budget would result in a hole in the budget and require the EU27 to look at how the budget is funded, including an increase in contributions from member states. A hard Brexit would be especially damaging for Ireland and while it is early days to predict the outcome of the negotiations, as the most exposed country we may need additional supports”, said McGuinness.