European Commission calls to retain CAP budgets

Common Agricultural Policy budgets should be frozen until 2020, a leaked European Commission report has claimed.

The draft document by EC farm experts DG Agri says European agriculture commissioner Dacian Ciolos wants budgets to be maintained for the 2014-2020 period.

The four-page report says €371.7bn should be allocated to EU farm policy over that time, as well as an additional €8.8bn to finalise the phasing-in of direct payments to newer member states.

The report says it also wants to be able to tap into an additional €4bn ring-fenced for agricultural research, as well as a €2.5bn Global Adjustment Fund to compensate farmers for the negative effects of possible international trade deals such as Mercosur.

The demands come ahead of the amount available for CAP spending being unveiled this week (29-30 June).

The proposed EU budget roadmap will outline spending in the union for the next seven years.

On top of a total freeze on budgets, the DG Agri report also says an additional €3.85bn should be earmarked for the possibility of Croatia joining the EU, as well as a separate €500m annual fund to ‘manage crises’ within the CAP.

This fund would “intervene in agricultural markets in urgent circumstances” and amount to €3.5bn for the seven-year programming period, the draft states.

An EC spokesman said there were “many notes and figures circulating” and that they were all provisional.

“Preparations and negotiations are on-going at both technical and political level to hammer out a deal this week,” he said.