Financial Times (London) / April 16, 2001 / BY: By Michael Mann in London
Franz Fischler, European Union farm commissioner, is seeking to shift the Common Agricultural Policy further from a predominantly market-based system of support towards a rural development policy promoting high environmental and quality standards.
Mr Fischler has told his European Commission colleagues he favours putting more of the CAP's annual Euros 40bn (Pounds 25bn) budget into rural development measures with no direct link to farm output. The move comes amid growing pressure for reform of the CAP, which is widely blamed for recent food scares.
Such a shift would go a long way to meeting consumer demands, while putting the EU in a stronger position in talks with its trading partners and making the CAP more suitable for the EU's enlargement into central and eastern Europe, he told his Commission colleagues last week.
"Farmers should receive premia for commitments going beyond good farming practices in terms of environment or animal welfare," Mr Fischler said. "Rural development must, therefore, get a much higher profile in relation to market policies."
He said farmers should receive incentives to produce the sort of food consumers wanted, but stressed that this did not mean a wholesale shift to organic farming.
Boosting the share of the CAP budget devoted to rural development from 10 per cent would mark a significant shift away from the traditional central management of the CAP and would alarm opponents of reform.
Most of the CAP budget is distributed directly by Brussels as direct aid to farmers based on the crops and livestock they produce and as price support and export subsidies. Rural development measures are co-financed by national administrations.
Mr Fischler is assessing the effectiveness of limited changes to the CAP agreed at the Berlin summit in March 1999, to pave the way for new proposals due after the French presidential election next spring.
Germany, previously a supporter of the status quo, has backed moves to a more "sustainable" form of agriculture. Even France, the policy's staunchest defender, has indicated a need to "reorientate" farm subsidies.
Mr Fischler said he was also looking at extending plans to make small farmers an annual one-off payment based on previous subsidies, rather than forcing them to claim under individual aid schemes.
He is also looking at making compulsory a voluntary programme under which EU states can skim off 20 per cent of their farmers' subsidies and put the money into a rural development fund.
Brian Gardner, farm policy analyst at PRM Consultants in Brussels, said Mr Fischler's ideas marked a step in the right direction. "The problem will be persuading governments, who are still intent on maximising their own take from the agricultural budget," he said.
Copyright 2001 The Financial Times Limited:
