Farmers: The European Commissioner announces concessions on the CAP

PARIS, February 23 (Reuters) – The European Commissioner for Agriculture proposes to amend Community legislation on the Common Agricultural Policy in order to put an end to the compulsory nature of four of the conditionalities imposed on farmers to benefit from CAP aid, particularly on fallowing.

In an interview to appear on Saturday in the regional dailies of the French group Ebra, Janusz Wojciechowski, who will go to the Agricultural Show in Paris on Sunday, says he understands “perfectly the criticisms of farmers” against European rules.

“The problems in agriculture were born from initiatives taken outside the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), on pesticides, on industrial emissions applied to agriculture – and I opposed these two initiatives”, he said, in particular with reference to the “Green Deal”.

Faced with farmers’ demands, the European Commissioner announces that he will submit on Monday to the Ministers of Agriculture of the European Union, meeting in Brussels, a change of position “on some of the conditionality rules which tend to limit agricultural production, and which thus create a risk for the food security of the European Union.”

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Janusz Wojciechowski specifically targets four conditionalities, denounced by French farmers: the conversion of arable land into permanent meadows, the ban on bare soil during sensitive periods, crop rotation and fallowing.

“After a year of application of the new CAP, I propose that these four elements are voluntary initiatives by farmers, that they are no longer imposed as obligatory conditionalities,” he explains.

“I will propose on Monday that we change the legislation on this point. But we can act now: I will also propose that, from this year, farmers are not penalized if they do not respect the conditionalities of the CAP, in particular the four that I mentioned,” he said. (Written by Sophie Louet)