She writes:
The outcome of the most recent CAP reform is clearly worrying farmers across the whole of the EU.
I was in Brussels yesterday at the first meeting of a new committee set up by the European farm organisation Copa-Cogeca, specifically to look at the new direct payments and greening rules. The aim of the group will be to identify where problems lie in the EU rules and what, if anything can be done to help sort them out for the benefit of farmers.
More of our staff blogs...
Insider blog: What does "CAP simplification" really mean?
Ask the Experts: Where should I buy my milk?
Anand Dossa, economist - Will falling oil prices cheer British farmers?
Andrea Graham, head of policy - Why British farmers have the edge
Before getting down to business, the committee had to elect a chairman and two vice chairmen. Working together with our Brussels office, I’m delighted to have secured enough support to be elected as one of the vice chairmen. This means I can really get into the heart of matters and work alongside the chairman, (the deputy director general of the German farm association Deutscher Bauernverband or DBV) and the other vice chairman (the deputy president of French farm association Fédération Nationale des Syndicats d'Exploitants d'Agricoles - FNSEA) to set the agenda and scope of the new committee.
So what can we expect from this new committee?
Within days of taking office the new EU Commissioner for Agriculture, Phil Hogan called for a review of the new CAP rules. He has now written to all of the Agriculture Ministers and the European Parliament asking for ideas and proposals for simplifying the CAP.
He has laid out three principles:
1. The basic political decisions taken in 2013 should, in principle, stay in place.
2. Proposals should not lead to a weakening of sound financial management or any increase in errors in CAP expenditure.
3. Priority should be given to those areas about which farmers and other beneficiaries are most concerned and where most would benefit from a reduction in the administrative burden.
It’s not too difficult to see where the burdens and concerns are going to lie. The new greening rules in particular are a hornet’s nest of technical problems and impractical demands. The Commission has made it clear that greening is here to stay, but we must work through the rules to see how we can make them more pragmatic and less bureaucratic.
The rules have come late, EU guidance is still not clear, yet farmers must comply with the new rules and declare as such in approximately 100 days. If they don’t and mistakes are made, farmers are likely to face reductions in their payments. Even with the best of intentions, this could happen - we are talking about workings in the field and on the ground after all. A major focus of the Copa-Cogeca group will be on securing tolerances and margins of error to give farmers a chance in the early years.
The Commissioner for Agriculture wants our ideas on simplification by the end of February. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, be sure to let me and your MEPs have them so they can be fed into the process. I’ll keep you posted of developments as things unfold at the European level. But don’t forget that the new rules are in place and they will need to be followed. You can check out the NFU’s specialist information channels to follow the latest on what you need to know and what you need to do now in order to meet the new rules.