- “And I think that we get green investment, uh, which is now granted to 26,000 holdings. If I move now to the third pillar and the social sustainability, I have a very good news here. And you know that the generational renewal is one of the top priorities in the European Union. And so far, the uptake is quite encouraging because for the second year, we have reached 164 young farmers supported to set up for the first time. This is much higher than the planned milestone. And overall, you know, we have a target of 377,000 young farmers to be installed by the end of the period. Also, there are good news in terms of job creation, 2000 200,000 jobs have been mainly created to support two young farmers. The generation of the local development strategy of this, this policy cycle, uh, the local development strategy, they've been selected. So they start now to implement projects. You have to also to know that the older generation of the strategies, they are still going on until the end of this year. And then in terms of animal welfare, I think we have quite a good uptake and then execution. Nearly 20% of all livestock benefited from the Cap support to improve animal welfare, which represent 22 million livestock units. We have also cross-cutting objective, which is improving knowledge, innovation and digitisation.”
Agriculture (green) · EU requirements on animal welfare for farmers
- “And more than €1 billion were allocated to sectorial support. And here I am speaking mostly about the wine operational programs where most of this money went. If I go to the second big pillar and objective is environment and climate actions. As you can see, the area based environment and climate benefit accounted for 28% of the total strategic plan public funding. And they are split in equally as the you know, the proportion is different in the two pillars. So 58% of the total agricultural area are covered with eco schemes, and 10% of EU agricultural areas are covered by agro environment climate measures. If I go more into deep, deeper into the environment and climate action results, and here we are looking to the results indicator, we can say that overall we have a good progress in meeting the annual milestones. We can see significant progress in protecting and improving, uh, soil and especially, uh, soil health and the enhanced carbon sequestration and other soil measures, also, sustainable nutrient management actions. Uh, they were carried out on 14% of the agricultural area. Uh, commitment for biodiversity conservation and restoration goes on. 23% of EU, uh, utilize agricultural area organic farming so far. Uh, it only covers 6% percent of agriculture area. You know, that overall target is almost 10%. So we still have uh, an avenue to to go there.”
Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1) · Agricultural funding
- “Um, support. Uh, you know, we want to support viable farm income and resilience of the agricultural sector. This is the main objective. And from the expenditure we receive 50.6 million farmers receive in 2024, 36.9 billion of income support as direct payments. And this, you know, it goes to active farmers. Also, 44% of the agricultural area benefited from redistributive income support. It goes to small and medium size farms. And you can see all the farmers below the average in the member states. They got a higher payment per hectare by 8% in average at the EU level. But you can see that in some member states it's much higher, whereas in other member states it's just above. So, um, um, if I move further on the competitiveness and value chain sectoral support, um, I think that one of the, uh, interventions where we are below the expectation is the risk management tools. Only 161,000 holdings, representing only 1.6% of total. Receive the support for the risk management tools and mostly subsidizing premium insurance premium. Um. Also, I told you that the investment is on a slow slope growing up, so 50,000 holdings, which represent only 0.5%, received support for modernization so far and nearly 135,000 holdings, which is 1.4 of all benefit for access, improving supply organizations or incentivizing a member of the producer organization to sell through this kind of organized form of supply.”
Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1) · Agricultural funding
- “If we make an average and we take all the results indicators we have, we do not see. We can rather take a positive view that the member states are heading to the figures. They are they are planning. Of course, in some of the interventions and I mentioned three categories here, they are slow and I mentioned investment, I mentioned risk management and I mentioned cooperation and the soft measures. First of all, they are slow because this is generally a structural issue in each policy cycle. Investment. They start slowly. I mentioned that first of all, they have to spend the money that still exists, and sometimes they address the same type of intervention, for instance, investment. They still have to spend the whole money not to lose them before they start new investment. There is also a matter of capacity because the member state they have to run with the same people the two programming periods. So I think this is a clear situation where we can understand there are other factors which are out of the control of the member states. For instance, inflation was very high cost of materials and sometimes equipment labor costs has increased. So these are other factors adding to the I will say slow start of the investment measure. We are looking with the member state to try to fix and to find situations to address this issue. Um, many of you, you ask about the generational renewal.”
Cohesion and rural funding · Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1) · Agricultural funding
- “I'm not talking only about the implementation of this programme, which we still have ahead of us three full years to implement. And if I take into account that for the rural development, we go two years after we have five years to implement this strategic plan and to achieve the results that have been planned, I mean, you ask me a lot of questions about the impact if we see the impact, and of course we measure so far the results indicator and some of the and rightly you ask if we can measure the impact on soil water biodiversity. And this comes in time. I mean we can show you now the results, how much area they are covered with the with the farming method practices which are supporting soil health, biodiversity restoration and reduction of pesticides and water pollution and all these things. But we can only measure this later on in the impact when we are measuring the impact. And after two years, it's too short to say, well, you know, we can already draw these conclusions. Um, there are obviously some areas which are for concern of us. And of course, we have to see with the member States if we need to look again to the targets plan, for instance, organic we had for the organic farming situation where, due to the inflation and the macroeconomic situation triggered by the war, all the crisis, the demand for organic has decreased.”
Agriculture (green)
- “We can also look, uh, in each member states that have a, uh, particular problem, we address this issue with, uh, with the member states. But I can conclude by saying that this year, um, which was the first time when we measure, uh, what was delivered in terms of results indicator compared to the plan. We don't have any member state to which we need to do an action plan. Uh, we consider that they they can reduce the deviation, the gap on the, on performing interventions and therefore next year we will expect a much better results. Um. You ask about the agricultural, I think. Um, agricultural, certainly. Um, we have the the agricultural support is programming the strategic plan. Probably the uptake is not so high because there are the old agricultural programs. They, they continue to to, to be implemented. And some of the new program programs have not, uh, generated expenditure. Um, of course, agricultural remain a very important area. And in the simplification package, we also listen to the agriculture, uh, to introduce the payments per beehive, which was a request of, uh, of our agricultural farmers, because it's much more difficult to, to do the payments per hectare for, for bee The keepers and, um. Well, I think I well, I more or less cover the, the question and I we stand ready to we can share the presentation and the the report.”
Agricultural funding
- “You see it on the screen. You can find it on the website, and you can get a lot more information that I present you today. So let me go first to the main results Of this exercise. So I told you this shows the implementation in 2024, with Member States reporting on the implementation and the declaration of expenditure by October 2024, but the reports have been submitted in February March 2025. So as a general conclusion, to start with a very positive point, it most results indicators have reached the set milestone plan in the strategic plans. And if we make an aggregate of this at the EU level, we can even draw the conclusion that the average EU results show better performance than plan with diverse member states achievement. Because some of the members say they are some of them they are above, some of them they are below the threshold, the value fixed. And of course there are some areas where the progress is not so advanced. This is especially Related to implementation of investment and risk management and some of the soft measures. And this is particularly I would say this is quite cyclical, because every time we start a new policy cycle, we still have overlapping with the old period.”
Cohesion and rural funding · Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1) · Agricultural funding
- “Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I have a PowerPoint presentation. I hope it can come from the screen. Um, first of all, I want to thank the committee for giving the jury the opportunity to present you the results. After two years of implementation of the Member States strategic plans. It comes very timely. This year, we receive the 28 strategic plan in full, I will say, because it's the first time when the member states they really reported. And as you remember, it is the year when the first time we do the biannual performance review, which is a review where we check the distance or how well the member states are on track to fulfil the targets they fix for the results indicators. And for 2024 is the first time when we do this exercise and it is a review where if there is a deviation higher than 35% from the plan values. If the member states do not have solid arguments to demonstrate this deviation, the Commission can ask corrective actions, including an action plan and if the action plans is not fulfilled or is not consistent, then the commission can get up to suspending the payments. But I have good news following the assessment and we are at the end of this process. Um, we we do not have any member states in this situation. Um, so the commission has, uh, compiled and aggregated all the information from the 28 member states, and we have produced a nice report.”
Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1) · Agricultural funding · Conditions to access EU budget
- “And of course, I said this is a positive story because we have a overall, the members say the program 377 Young Farmer installed by the end of 2027, and they program €8.5 billion to support this farmer to set up, to get a top up of the income support per hectare and to support them for investment, to bring their farms up to standards or to create funds, which is modern for a young farmer. And the fact that in the first two years, and this is cumulative, in the first two years, they managed to get about half of the target is very good, probably will will run out of money. Or we have to see how if we have much more demands to accommodate them for the future. Of course. Um, the commission is preparing and this has been announced in the vision. We are preparing the the generational renewal strategy we are We're trying to look in a much broader sense. What are the factors hindering the generational renewal, uh, to propose measures at the EU and the national level, because this is not an issue only from the European Union. It's also from the national competence. And we would like to have this strategy. And this will be presented to you in as it is planning the in the vision. And of course, the new cap will have to support this. I will not discuss today about the new cap because it will be published in a few days, and then we'll have another occasion to discuss about it.”
Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1) · Agricultural funding
- “And we are discussing this House several times. What are we supposed to do? And there are some member states doing well, but there are some other members that are not doing well. And for instance, we have members said they were very, very generous in planning a lot of conversion to organic, and they have not got enough application for the farmers to convert to organic. On the contrary, we also have some situation when the farmers decided to reconvert to conventional. So we have to look into this situation to see what are the factors. And of course, these are the eco schemes which are still attractive for the for the farmers. But we want to see if this is conjuncture or is structural. If it is structural, we will have to do some adjustments. Of course, in general the eco schemes, they remain attractive. And I can say that if you look to the the high level of eco scheme we had in Europe and having a view that this is a brand new instruments, I think the uptake and the um, expenditure done so far shows that we are on a good track. I think there must be a misunderstanding regarding the figure on the agri environment climate measure, because the money spent are much higher. But I think in the, in the uh, chart I presented, uh, but this is also cumulative and the area covered, I think it's much smaller than uh, uh, than uh, in, in the first pillar eco schemes.”
Agriculture (green) · Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1)
- “Um, many of you, you question about the risk management, and indeed, I think the good news is the money, which many members say they plan, uh, risk management instruments than in the past. I think if my recollection is good, I don't have figures in front of me. I think we have 14 members say they have planned a risk management incident, which is basically subsidizing the premium insurance insurance premium. And a few, very few of them are setting up these mutual funds. Um, these are the expenditures we have mentioned to you, which is very low so far. So it is the subscription of the. So the many more members say they plan it, but the farmers, they have not subscribed. We have tried the second package of simplification also to reduce and to add to, to add additional flexibility in calculating the losses and making the possibility of using financial instruments more attractive to the farmers. And we hope that once this package will be adopted, maybe we will have a much more attraction of this kind of instrument, which is absolutely necessary for for our farmers, which are much more confronted with, uh, uh, the this, uh, natural disasters and events. Um. Well, I think we can provide you a lot more information. Uh, um, and first of all, I suggest you that you can you can consult our documents.”
Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1) · EU policy on infrastructure for preventing climate-related disasters (floods, droughts, extreme weather etc.)
- “The on the risk management or the? Um, but the what do you mean by this objective of more equitable, uh, income support was that the more in needs small and medium, they should get more money. And this has been done through this redistributive payments and capping, which was voluntary. And I think all of the members say they fulfill in the planning, uh, this target of of redistributing at least 10%. Some members say they were much more generous than they. Redistribute more money. And some of them, they went up to a much higher figure 30% if I. Remember the best member states, but this was in the planning and in the execution, then it depends how many farmers they apply. And this is why I think the execution level is lower than the 10% initially, um, achieving the planning. But this is one of the areas we can look into it. But I know your question is mostly regarding the what you call the external convergence, but this is done. What's done in this in this multiannual Financial framework to reduce further the gap but not to fill the gap. So 50% of the difference between the national level and 90% of the EU average, and this should be completed by 2027 at the end of the programme. But this is a process which which goes smoothly every year by adding a bit more on payments per hectare in this Member States.”
Cohesion and rural funding · Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1) · Agricultural funding
- “We also got. Inputs from the farmers organization. We also got inputs from the parliament. Many MEPs wrote to us, so we had last year, following the simplification process, a survey which reached quite an impressive number of farmers, 27,000 farmers wrote to us. We then have interviews with about 800 farmers. So we got a very clear idea what were the elements which were Impacting on the farmers in terms of administrative burden, and we try to address them in this package. We have a lot of discussion in the Civil Dialogue group on the 24th of March and in the Cap network on the 2nd of April. And not least, I will also mention the Commissioner Christopher Hansen has visited so far 14 member states, and he got from the ground a lot of realities. And he have seen with his eyes how things are working on the ground. So the scope of simplification package is described in a much wider roadmap. So it is not only this simplification, we have other elements. So there is a new package of simplification, an omnibus which is going to be adopted by the college in the in the fourth quarter of The 2025 addressing the legislation, which is not part of the Cap, but it is legislation impacting heavily on the activity of the farmers in terms of in terms of administration, in terms of controls. Um, so let me go quickly.”
Agricultural funding
- “Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Honourable members of the Parliament, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to present to you today the recently adopted by the College proposal for simplification of Common Agricultural Policy. As you mentioned, Madam Chair, this is part of the top priority of the new college, mentioning the simple and faster Europe and the competitive compass communication. I have a short presentation here. If it is working. Yes. Um, as you mentioned also, this is one of the flagship initiative announced by the vision for Agriculture and Food, adopted in February 2025. It builds up on the last year simplification we have adopted as a matter of urgency following the protest of the farmers in March. Following this simplification, we have entered into a lot of consultations and we gather a lot of additional evidence. Now we have two full years of experience of the implementation of the Cap strategic plans, with a full report, annual performance report this year. So we know very well what is working, what is working less. In this strategic plan and what we should correct during the implementation to make it a more efficient, but also to simplify and correct things that they have not proven to function in reality as it has been planned. We got a lot of inputs from the member states. The Polish Presidency of the Council has gathered more than 400 proposals coming from the member states.”
Agriculture (green) · Agricultural funding
- “We have harmonized the ceiling with the state aid rules. So we have increased it to €300,000. And they will also harmonise with the other funds on eligibility of the VAT. And then we also have a lot of requests from the fruit and vegetable sector to allow them to apply a higher, um, percentage of uh payments in case of common sales, and not asking them to fulfil all the conditions as initially foreseen in the regulation. Another block of simplification concern reviewing and and accommodating local conditions for a part of the conditionality green architecture. So, um, we have several cases where the member states they define the gaiark. And there was also legislation and the farmer they were getting confused which set of rules to use. So then we have we harmonize this making the possibility with to use mandatory national requirement as long as they are comply with the standards. We have reviewed the definition of the permanent grassland. Uh, you know, the currently, uh, after five years, if the permanent grassland stays, it's changed the land use and sometimes farmers, they were obliged to plow after five years and with negative effects. So we have also in line with the agronomic practices we have extended to seven years, and we have given a much wider scope to the member states of triggering the reconversion in case the ratio between the permanent grassland and agricultural land. So we have increased it for 5 to 10%.”
State Aid · VAT harmonisation · Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1)
- “We have reviewed also the guy two to give the possibility of the farmers when there are too many requirements to be compensated for some of requirements and for the gaiark. Four we have also tried to align the requirements with the other legislation on the water courses, because there was different kind of definition of water courses in our legislation. And in the, for instance, action plans for Nitrate Directive, we have made a harmonization for the organic farming. Considering them compliant, they are deemed to be compliant with the requirements of five Gaia-x. And this was in the past always been considered to be green compliant. But in the new legislation we asked them to comply. So we have removed this obligation for them. I want to move to the next block. If someone can help me. Yeah. Um, then we have a review on the Strengthen the Risk and crisis management tool. First of all, we have introduced additional flexibility and possibilities in calculating the method of losses triggering the compensations for risk management tools. And because recently we have confronted more and more with natural disasters, animal disease and other exceptional circumstances, we are now allow the Member States to create a possibility to compensate farmers in the period of restoring the agricultural potential. Sometimes they have to restore the potential, but during this period they have no income and no possibility to continue activity, also losing the income caused by the disaster.”
Agriculture (green) · Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1)
- “This is always we call them soft measures. They usually have a slow, slow go. And at this time we are at the beginning. But I think we have some encouraging figures I will not go through. You see them on the screen because I want to keep a bit of time to explain you. To give you some information about the state of play across the member States, because I know this is the Parliament is very interesting. You know, that all the standards should be implemented by 2025, including the EC2, which was the last one which has a phase in process. We did a lot of revision of the guides, and we have annual derogation for gig 7 in 2023 and in 2023 and 24. Um. Through the simplification package, we we simplify it further. And just to give you the some results now, because I know that you ask us several times about this. So 24 member states applied derogation for guy seven and eight. Guy seven. Several member states reported that the delegation led to an increase of sowing of wheat and in terms of production, because this was supposed to deliver plus plus 5.9 million tons of additional food production was a result of this derogation, of which point for 1 million tons of cereals. Thank you very much and I apologize for exceeding my time. Thank you.”
Use of fertilisers · Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1)
- “Thank you very much. I will try to do my best to answer their many questions. First of all, I think the report I showed you, you can get a lot more information than I could present you in eight minutes here. Of course, you will not get all the answer to the question you ask. I will try to answer to the most important. I grouped them on several categories. First of all, I want to say that this is a report which looks into how much the member States they realize from what has been planned into the strategic plans approved. So when we compare, we compare what has been reported which was was planned, and to see the difference, the distance. And if the distance is too much, then we have to ask the member States why. And then we have several occasions and we, the Commission, sit with each member States on each annual performance report in several occasions, including the annual review meetings. We meet all the Member States, all the authorities, and take all the indicators where they are below the deviation of 35%, or indicators where they are much lower in the deviation, but where the justification are not so credible. And of course, we are trying to address the issues, and I didn't want to present this results as a very rosy situation. But I wanted to say that we have a situation where we don't see anything dramatic in underperformance compared with what was planned.”
Cohesion and rural funding · Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1) · Agricultural funding
- “And there are still a lot of money to be spent under the Rural Development Programme. Similar expenditures of the member states. They put a lot of efforts to spend first the money and then they have a slower start of this, um, interventions. Um, so we expect in the coming years this process to accelerate, especially because the rural development programme come to the end, they will be close at the end of this year. And the member States, they will enter in full speed of implementing this, uh, these interventions. And we can also say that the monitoring and the performance framework set up for this cap, um, cycle, uh, fulfil its objective to show the cap delivery. So here is a global picture of the all expenditure declared by the Member States in 2024. As you can see, the huge part of the budget was spent and declared to the EU budget 87% of expenditure. They are dedicated to the direct payments, including here the eco schemes. Also, the environment climate measures account for 9% of the FDI. But as I mentioned you, the investment part is slowly taking up. They represent by now 50% of the RDP average of the expenditure. Let me go now through the four main blocks of the strategic plans. And I will start first with the the general objective of advancing a fair and competitive agriculture.”
Cohesion and rural funding · Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1) · Agricultural funding
- “We also wanted to incentivize simple access to investment for small businesses and farmers of course. And by using more lump sums, we we have the possibility to use the simplified cost options. But there are a lot of solutions for small amounts, and there is a possibility now to apply for a lump sum of 50,000 businesses. And this is a very simple lump sum reimbursement. Um, then we have looked to other measures to boost competitiveness and digitization. Um, so we want first of all to enhance the use of digital tools and to remove the burden of reporting because, according to our estimates, the farmers, they spend about six seven working days a year for administrative burden. And we have introduced the principle of report once and use multiple times. So once an information is provided, it should be used from them and not collected again. We are also looking to the reducing the control pressure by introducing the principle of single on the spot control. So we would like that the member States they will optimize the control different controls and try to, as much as possible, to organize one single control, if possible, for one farm during one year. Um, we look also to the possibility to simplify and optimize the use of financial instrument, because this gives the possibility of using a much, uh, Multiplying instruments of of accessing investments.”
Digital and precision farming · Agricultural funding
- “So to prevent, uh, and to take assurance that against the risk, then we still have the possibility of restoring the agricultural forestry potential in case of disaster. But in this period, these farmers, they lose basically all the incomes. And if we want them to restore and continue to work, they should also have a support for this lost activity income. And this will give them a relief during this period when they will re-establish the, uh, this, uh, capacity. So this is the purpose of this new additional crisis. Crisis measure. Of course, this is not the only, um, package for simplification. As I mentioned, they will come another one which is looking to all the legislation, which is not cap, it is outside of the cap, but which Impact on the administrative burden of the farmers. I mean, I can mention here about the, I don't know, the pesticides and all the other authorities that are, you know, water. There is a lot of legislation where there are different administrations. They all go and check on the field. And the idea is that we try to streamline and this and better organize this visits on the farms, this control in a simplified way. So the farmers, they do not spend days and days of daytime and day work in this, uh, in this activities.”
Agricultural funding
- “And this does not provide any added value in the process. And to increase the predictability of CIP strategic support at the end of the programming period. And then you remember that we have a revision clause. Any time there is a new amendments to the legislation for seen in the annex 13 last year. We have capped this at the end of 2025. But basically we are entering into the end of the strategic plan period. And for the last two years, there is no basically there is no practical time and no legislation which required to make this assessment. So we have removed this obligation. Um, so I mentioned to you that, uh, we are going to have another, another cross cutting legislation, uh, simplification in the last part. And uh, then we will we have a list of secondary legislation that will come to complement this simplification. Some of them, they come just as a normal modification of the basic act. Some of them they come also as an exercise to simplify. For instance, in organic legislation that we would like in the secondary legislation to see how much we can simplify also there. And some of them, they are purely administrative in the process of reviewing adopting plans. And we are going to work on this. We also work on this very complex process of area monitoring system, which combine area monitoring system, land parcel identification system and geospatial application.”
Agricultural funding
- “So we have they now they have this possibility to create this mechanism. Then we have a number of measures which comes to alleviate the administrative burden for the member States. First of all, there were a lot of complaints of the member states on the process of amending the plan cap plan last year. You remember, we have added an additional amendment, but the member states considered that we should keep the plan as strategic, and we have made a differentiation between what is a strategic change and what is not a strategic change, where we go for a kind of a no objection. So the member states, they notify and apply, and then the commission will look at it and then issue an objection or no objection. This will allow them to apply very quickly some more non strategic changes and go very quickly and addressing them. So we have also decided to remove the annual performance clearance exercise which which proved in the two years implementation that they don't have a real added value but on the contrary generate a lot of administrative burden for the Member States because every time there is a deviation of the unit amount, then they have to justify it and all the deviation should be justified. And sometimes the member state, they have hundreds of unit amount that have to be justified any, any year.”
Agricultural funding
- “So, um, we have put in this package a large package of measures targeting mostly administrative burden controls, implementation, and also reviewing some other elements like crisis responses and making investments simple and more attractive, uh, for the sector. And we also try to quantify how much impact in terms of administrative, administrative cost savings for the beneficiaries and for the member states. So we have got roughly an amount of €1.6 billion euro per year, savings of administrative costs for farmers, and about 210 million years for the national administration. Let me go very quickly through the elements of the main elements of the simplification. So we have started, first of all, addressing the administrative burden for the small farmers. And you may remember that small farmers, they had the option of going either into the normal menu of the Common Agricultural Policy, or they can go for a simplified measures, and they only opt for a lump sum of €1,250. And it proves that this amount was not attractive enough. And in the strategic plans, only a few number of countries, six member states, they have applied this. So since this is a very simple measure, we have decided to double the amount. So the incentivize more farmers to go in this very simple lump sum measure. And this measure is a lump sum. So it is only a direct income support. So it does not have conditionality requirement as going into the normal menu of the measures.”
Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1) · Simplification measures (political compass)
- “Uh, proposal. There were some other questions. I mean, we are not touching in this proposal on anything, which is social, uh, aspects of the current cap. This is regulated separately, outside of the, uh, outside of the conditionality, the general conditionality. So everything related to social conditionality goes on as it is planned. And the member states, they will have to implement this conditionality, um, on this crisis reserve. I could not give you more detail, but I can answer. So the idea is that we've been more and more and the natural disasters, animal disease and this special circumstances we are confronted with, like the war of aggression in Ukraine. Covid and other things intensified and are more and more present. And the farmers are very hard hit. And, you know, we have an agricultural reserve which is quite limited for €150 million per year. And we have created this possibility in the strategic plan. So the member States, they can mobilize up to 3% of the strategic plan to create a reserve and to intervene punctually. And they do not need every time to come to Brussels to ask access to the crisis reserve. They can have their own reserve and they can mix better the risk management, so they can still have the 3% they can dedicate for insurance and other risk management tools. We would like to have a kind of a better combination of the preventive and reactive measures.”
Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1) · Agricultural funding · EU policy on infrastructure for preventing climate-related disasters (floods, droughts, extreme weather etc.)
- “We have to make one single process and limit the presence and visit on the spot on the farms. So this is roughly the content of this proposal adopted today. I will be happy to listen to you and to answer any questions. The other point I would like to inform you is that you know that the basic regulation for Common Agricultural Policy allowed the member States to transfer funds between the two pillars. So the last exercise, when the member said they can make decision of transferring funds between pillar one and pillar two was in 2025. For this, we need to issue a delegated act and to act the proposal of the Member States, because we have many requests of the Member States to delay the deadline by which they should submit their proposal for transfer. We propose a delegated act moving this deadline to 31st of August, 2025. So this transfer then will be acted in a delegated act. I hope that the Co-legislator will swiftly go through the scrutiny and probably not consider any necessity to extend any scrutiny, because it's very important that we can conclude very quickly this process and act. The modification made by the Member States, because then they will be. Internalised in amendments of the strategic plan to allow these transfers to take effect. I stop here, thank you very much for your attention. And I will be listening carefully to your.”
Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1) · Agricultural funding
- “Thank you very much. I want to thank you all for your intervention. I listen carefully. Certainly you are going to see the proposal, and you will have all the time to scrutinise and go into details. It is not possible in eight minutes to give you all the details. I try to give you the big blocks. I will try to to group a bit the questions and my reaction. So first of all on simplification. So the main purpose of this exercise, which is a continuous exercise because we started last year and we introduced last year a lot of flexibilities and possibilities to recognize a context and situation at the local level. And now I'm coming to one question how we can decide here in Brussels what's going to happen in each individual member states. We gave last year a lot of flexibility to member states for temporary or derogations or adjusting the especially in the green architecture to the local context, to the local situation, especially giving also the possibility to accommodate events which were not foreseen, like climatic events, and make these adjustments so the farmers cannot suffer. Then we try to exempt the small farmers. This was in our policy since a long time from control and penalty. Remember, last year we have exempted farmers up to ten hectares from control, up penalties for a number of gags. Then In this year, we are trying to remove some elements which proved to be very difficult into the implementation, or to adjust them to the reality in the field, and some of them, they are going to produce positive results.”
Agriculture (green)
- “I mean, I will take I will take the example of definition of permanent grassland, because before farmers they felt obliged to plough or till the permanent, the permanent grassland which was not permanent grassland. Not to change the to change the use of land and to become permanent grassland. So we give this more longer period before this happened. So this will have a positive effect. Then last year we already introduced and I'm coming now to some principles and to the link of this simplification with the future proposal for the Common Agricultural Agricultural policy. So last year, we already started to see, uh, on some of the conditionality, uh, how to play better between conditions and incentives. And we make the opening with the eight. And now we are making the opening with two. So there are some requirements which are quite limiting, uh, farmers in their production potential. So and if, uh, we have to compensate them because they will have a real loss of income and production. So this is what we do now. I mean, in the vision for agriculture and food, we already stated this principle that we should, uh, better play with conditions, incentives and investment.”
Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1)
- “But of course, what is what concerns the second pillar of the Common Agricultural Policy goes beyond 2027 for the rule of n plus two. So it basically can go up to 2009. So so there is still a good period of time when this simplification will make sense. Uh, and then uh, the new proposal for the cap that will come in the same time with MF and I will not be able to answer you about the timing because it's not in my competence. Uh, but this proposal will come in the mid of July. Uh, and usually the principles and elements, uh, we have a tradition in linking the caps, uh, between the policy cycles that some principle and simplification we adopt in this period. Then we try to transpose as much as possible in the next proposal. So some of these very good principle and I think in the vision for agriculture and food, there is very well said that we are trying to have a Cap post 2026, which is simple and we have to have it a more targeted and some of these principles. I'm pretty sure that we are going to continue them in the, in the future.”
Direct payments to farmers (pillar 1) · Agricultural funding
- “Um, I'm pretty sure that we can go more in details when we will start scrutinising the text in the, in the codecision. So I try as much as possible to answer your question. Maybe one last point on the, um, yeah. On the on the conditionality and the, uh, green architecture. Um, of course, we have a plan which is approved. We are going to come to you in, uh, at the end of the year with a report to report to you about you, especially on the implementation, on the green architecture. So this will cover the two first years, and you will get a very clear view of what's happened in the reality. So this simplification, of course they need to be acted in this strategic plans approved. And here I'm come to a question about the the continuity and predictability. Because these plans, they have been negotiated with all the stakeholders and with the farmers. And every time there is a change and this simplification package will require to change the plan, and they will be discussed in the, in the partnership with the with the partners about all these changes. So the farmers, the NGOs, the all the stakeholders will have to look into the amendments proposed by the member States before we act. This changes and simplification in the revised version of the Strategic Strategic Plan. So I stop here. Thank you for your attention.”
Agriculture (green) · Simplification measures (political compass)