The NFU was out in force in Brussels this week to persuade members of the European Parliament to improve the potentially damaging CAP reform proposals drawn up by the European Commission.
NFU deputy president Meurig Raymond and chairman of NFU Combinable Crops Board, Ian Backhouse, met members of all the major European parties during a two-day visit.
The Commission proposals have received widespread criticism since their publication in October and are now in the hands of MEPs and Member State Ministers to amend.
Mr Raymond said: “At a meeting in the European Parliament on Monday, agriculture ministers and MEPs said they wanted a simpler CAP to drive productive and competitive agriculture in Europe. Our job is to hold them to those comments when they start to amend the Commission’s proposals.”
Mr Raymond focused his meetings on the European Parliament’s largest political group, the European People’s Party, which doesn’t have any UK members but will be hugely influential as CAP reform progresses. He also met with leading MEPs from the Conservative Party.
“I have been hammering home the message that the Commission's complex and anti-competitive proposals must be improved and I urge all within the agriculture industry to lobby their MEPs and MPs to help to amend the proposals,” said Mr Raymond.
Mr Backhouse was in Brussels in his role as the chairman of the Cereals Working Group for the powerful farming organisation COPA, which represents all EU farmers.
Mr Backhouse met with MEPs from the Socialist and Liberal groups of the European Parliament and also spoke at a conference on CAP greening. “I have been telling MEPs that they must design a flexible and voluntary approach to greening which will not add significant cost, bureaucracy or impact on production.
“Of course we recognise that farmers need to protect environment but it must be done through green growth which leads farm businesses to be sustainable, productive and competitive,” he said.
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