Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1388399
14 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 30 JUNE 2021 EUROPE THE provisional political agreement reached on Friday night between the Europe- an Parliament, Council and Commission on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to be introduced during the cur- rent budget period promises a fairer, greener, more animal friendly and flexible policy with higher environmental and climate ambitions. According to the Commis- sion, the new CAP will also ensure a fairer distribution of CAP support, especially to small and medium-sized fam- ily farms and young farmers. Based on simpler rules set up at EU level, each member state will prepare a strategic plan to implement the policy over the next five years. This will allow them to take local conditions into account and to focus on performance. "Throughout the negotia- tions, the Commission has worked for a new CAP that can support the Green Deal," said Commission Executive Vice-President Frans Timmer- mans. In charge of the European Green Deal, he was referring to the objective of the 55 % green- house-gas (GHG) emissions reductions by 2030 aiming at climate neutrality by 2050 and the EU Biodiversity and Farm to Fork strategies. "The agreement reached to- day marks the start of a real shift in how we practice agri- culture in Europe. In the next years, we will protect wet- and peatlands, dedicate more farm- land to biodiversity, boost or- ganic farming, open up new income sources for farmers via carbon farming, and begin to redress inequalities in the dis- tribution of income support." However, the changes appear moderate to start with. The CAP will be somewhat fairer with a mandatory redistribu- tion of income support but big Agri companies will continue to receive most of the support as member states will only have redistribute at least 10% to the benefit of smaller farms. The CAP will be greener but the minimum requirements to receive support is that every farm will have to dedicate at least 3% of arable land to bio- diversity and non-productive elements, with a possibility to receive a support via so-called Ecoschemes to achieve 7%. All wetlands and peatlands will be protected. The Ecoschemes are man- datory for member states to offer but will apparently be a voluntary instrument to re- ward farmers for implement- ing climate and environmen- tally-friendly practices such as organic farming, agroecology, and integrated pest manage- ment as well as animal welfare improvements. Member states must allocate at least 25% of their income support budget to Ecoschemes, a total of €48 billion of the di- rect payments budget. This is less than the 30 % the European Parliament had proposed and might be even less in reality, according to the Greens/EFA in the Parliament. "This agreement falls short of the Green Deal ambition and the transformation and reori- entation of EU agricultural pol- icy that farmers, biodiversity and the climate so badly need," the political group comment- ed. "The CAP was supposed to be the big building block of the Green Deal. What remains is a series of empty slogans with big agri-business as usual or, in many cases, a deterioration of the status quo." The deal between the three European institutions comes only a week after the publica- tion of the special audit report by the European Court of Au- ditors (ECA) on the impact of the CAP on greenhouse-gas emissions during the previous budget period. Despite the more than €100 billion the EU invested in cli- mate change in the last six years, the agricultural sector's greenhouse gas emissions from livestock, chemical fertilisers and manure, and land use have not decreased. A previous audit report from July 2020 showed the EU lacked reliable tracking of climate spending during the 2014 – 2020 period. No specific climate objectives in CAP The Commission partially accepted the most important audit recommendation on in- viting the member states to establish a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from their agricultural sectors. According to the Commis- sion's reply, which arrived late and contrary to audit practice was published separately, there are no specific mitigation tar- gets for agriculture because they have been covered by na- tional reduction targets and, in the Green Deal, will be part of the emission targets for the whole EU economy. The recent ECA audit showed that this has not worked in the past. "We believe that if mem- ber states would set themselves a target for agriculture, it would be easier for the Commission to assess whether this target is ambitious and whether the measures planned to be sup- ported are likely to achieve it," Viorel Stefan, the ECA mem- ber responsible for the report, told The Brussels Times. New Common Agricultural Policy: