The European Commission has officially approved the strategic CAP plans of the first seven EU countries: Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, and Spain.
Brussels calls these initial approvals from several major agricultural EU countries an important step toward implementing a new Common Agricultural Policy starting next year.
For the period 2023-2027, 270 billion euros are available for agricultural payments. The seven approved plans together account for nearly half of that amount (120 billion euros), of which more than 34 billion is exclusively for environmental and climate objectives.
As part of this new agricultural policy, EU countries can now independently set a package of subsidizable measures, provided they contribute to ten EU criteria for sustainable agriculture. However, these must be contractually fixed in national plans.
EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski said this approval comes at a crucial moment. According to him, European agriculture is in a difficult situation: the Russian war in Ukraine and summer drought have led to a sharp rise in production costs. European farmers need a long-term perspective, including a clear legal and financial framework, Wojciechowski emphasized.
However, he could not yet say how advanced the negotiations are with the remaining twenty EU member states. Of the seven now approved strategic plans, it was already known in June that Brussels agreed to five of them. At the last moment, only Italy and Ireland were added to this list. For all other countries it has been known since May/June that they would miss the August 1 deadline, as well as September or October.
Several Central European countries started submitting their plans far too late because they basically did not want the European Commission to have control over this.
Negotiations over the German plans are largely stalled because the German traffic light coalition has not yet agreed on funding a major modernization of agriculture and livestock farming. Moreover, there is still dispute in Germany about competences at the regional or national level.
Approval of the Dutch strategic plan is delayed because of 'interconnectedness with other dossiers,' as it is euphemistically put. It is not yet clear whether Brussels or The Hague is linking the Ministry of Agriculture dossiers. Although nowhere formally confirmed, it is clear that the large quantities of Dutch manure and nitrogen are the main stumbling block for the agricultural division in Brussels.
The EU Nitrates Committee will make a decision on September 15 regarding the Dutch request for an extension of the more lenient rules on manure spreading. The European Commission is expected to take the final decision on the same Wednesday or a week later. That will then have to be incorporated into the strategic plan arrangements, which come into effect on January 1, 2023.